1.9 Empathetic approach

You are vulnerable when you have to learn new things and especially you are vulnerable if you are about to learn something you actually doubt you can learn.

It is important that you are aware of the fact as a teacher and are able to empathetically meet and accommodate all types of students.

Empathy is the ability to recognize and understand the feelings of others. It is often described as the ability to put one self in the shoes of others (not to be confused with sympathy which is the ability to share a feeling with a person, i.e. that one himself experiences the same feeling as the person). In empathy, one feels into the other, in sympathy one feels with the other.

In practice, this means that as a teacher, you will be able to make it easier for many students and especially senior students who are not trained to participate in teaching and with limited confidence in their own learning purpose, that the teacher at the start puts into words any of the feelings and doubts one believes and by some students will sit with and subsequently express his unlimited belief in and experience with,  that they all can and will learn what they have come to learn.