Updated by Emma Moore
At E. M. Yoder Elementary School (Alamance-Burlington School System, NC), a food drive began before a single donation was collected. Students first learned about hunger in their own community: who was affected, why food insecurity exists, and how local organizations support families in need.
By the time they started collecting donations, students had a better understanding of the people behind the need and the impact of their actions. Making these connections helped students build empathy: the ability to understand and consider the feelings, perspectives, and experiences of others.
Like reading and writing, empathy is an essential skill students need for success in school and in life after graduation, and it also develops through intentional modeling and practice.
Empathy helps students communicate, collaborate, and work effectively with people whose experiences differ from their own. As schools increasingly prepare students for collaborative, globally connected workplaces, empathy is becoming a critical career-ready competency rather than simply a social-emotional skill.
Because empathy develops through repeated practice and intentional learning experiences, schools need consistent structures that help students build these skills over time rather than through isolated activities alone. That’s why it’s one of the ten global competencies at the focus of Global Leaders, Participate Learning’s school transformation framework designed to help students build career-ready skills through real-world learning.
Schools that intentionally design empathy-building into instruction are better preparing students for modern work and citizenship.
In this article, we’ll explore how empathy develops in K–12 students, what it looks like across grade levels, and how schools can build it through everyday instruction and school culture.
While empathy often develops through everyday classroom interactions, schools can also intentionally design learning experiences that help students practice perspective-taking, reflection, and community-connected problem-solving more consistently.
Small instructional choices, like considering a character’s motivations or emotions during a book discussion, help students move from simply noticing another person’s experience to thinking more carefully about why someone might feel or act the way they do. When empathy-building becomes part of everyday learning, students get repeated practice making sense of people’s choices, reactions, and needs.
Schools can also build empathy through action-based projects, using a Global Leaders structure. Students first learn about an issue, then explore how it affects people, and finally decide how they can respond or take action. This sequence gives students time to engage more deeply with an issue before jumping into solutions.
When students regularly practice empathy through experiences like these, they learn how to work more effectively with the people around them. In classrooms, that can look like students listening more carefully to one another, working through disagreements respectfully, collaborating more effectively in groups, and thinking about the impact of their words and actions.
These competencies increasingly influence how students navigate collaboration, conflict resolution, leadership, and communication both inside and outside the classroom.
These skills continue to matter beyond the classroom as students learn to navigate teamwork in different areas of their lives. The ability to communicate clearly and collaborate successfully with others is becoming increasingly important in modern workplaces. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies empathy and active listening among the human-centered skills employers increasingly value in today’s workforce.
Teaching empathy doesn’t require a separate curriculum. In many schools, it develops through everyday instructional choices, classroom routines, and opportunities for students to engage with people and perspectives beyond their own.
Here are four approaches Global Leaders schools use to help students build empathy alongside the communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills increasingly important for career readiness.
Quick takeaway: When students connect learning to real people and community challenges, empathy becomes more concrete, personal, and actionable.
Students are more likely to develop empathy when learning is connected to real people and issues affecting their communities and the wider world.
At E.M. Yoder Elementary, students explored food insecurity before beginning their food drive. Teachers partnered with a local organization to help students understand what families in their community need and how food insecurity affects them throughout the year.
By learning about the issue before taking action, students were able to connect service to the experiences of real people rather than treating the project as a standalone activity.
These experiences help students see how the issues they learn about in class affect real people in their communities, and how their actions can make a difference.
Quick takeaway: Stories help students emotionally connect to experiences they may never encounter directly, strengthening their ability to understand and relate to people with different lived experiences.
Stories allow students to emotionally connect with experiences they may never encounter directly. Through literature, students can step into people’s challenges, emotions, and everyday lives in ways that feel personal and memorable.
Books like Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson and Wonder by R.J. Palacio create natural opportunities for students to discuss relationships, belonging, exclusion, and compassion. At EM Yoder, teachers used Maddi’s Fridge to help students better understand food insecurity before launching the schoolwide food drive.
Reading and discussing stories encourages students to consider what someone else may be thinking or feeling beneath the surface.
Quick takeaway: Examining competing perspectives helps students navigate complexity and disagreement more thoughtfully rather than assuming there is only one valid viewpoint.
Students also build empathy when they examine how people interpret the same event, issue, or challenge differently. Schools can support this by creating opportunities for students to compare viewpoints, examine competing ideas, and discuss how context shapes the way people understand the world around them.
In social studies, students might compare different accounts of the same historical event. In science, they might explore how environmental issues affect communities differently around the world. In classroom discussions, students can practice listening to ideas that challenge their own assumptions.
Examining multiple perspectives helps students practice navigating disagreement, listening to differing viewpoints, and discussing complex ideas respectfully, skills that increasingly shape collaboration in modern workplaces.
Quick takeaway: Reflection helps students move beyond participation alone and think more deeply about why issues matter and how their actions affect others.
Empathy deepens when students have time and space to reflect on what they’re learning and how it connects to real people and situations.
Schools can support this through discussion routines, reflective writing, collaborative projects, and opportunities for students to contribute ideas and take meaningful roles in projects they care about.
At South Graham Elementary (Alamance-Burlington School System, NC), students explored global hunger through reading, discussion, visual storytelling, and music before organizing a food drive. Students wrote original song lyrics, created visual projects, and shared their learning through a schoolwide performance.
Because students had opportunities to reflect, contribute ideas, and take ownership of the project, they were able to practice communicating their thinking, collaborating with others, and connecting their learning to real community needs.
When schools consistently create space for student voice and reflection, empathy becomes part of how students learn to understand themselves, relate to others, and engage with the world around them.
Hear from school leaders who have seen the impact of Global Leaders firsthand. In this video, principals share how the framework helps students develop empathy, leadership, and a greater understanding of the world around them while strengthening school culture along the way.
Empathy-building is often most effective when students have time to learn about an issue before taking action. Rather than approaching service projects as isolated events, schools can create learning experiences that help students explore an issue, connect it to real people and communities, and consider why it matters before deciding how to respond.
At South Graham Elementary, they expanded a service-learning event into a month-long schoolwide initiative called “No Hunger Month.” After weeks of learning about global hunger through reading, discussion, and cross-subject activities, the event culminated in a food drive. Together, students across all grade levels collected 1,773 items, nearly triple the amount from the previous year.
The project’s impact came from everything students did before the food drive began. As students discussed the issue, reflected on different perspectives, and collaborated on projects connected to the initiative, they also practiced communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills that extend beyond the classroom.
Without time for learning and reflection first, service projects can feel disconnected or performative. But when schools create space for students to learn about the people and issues involved, students are more likely to develop empathy and feel genuinely connected to their communities.
Empathy increasingly shapes how people work with others in modern workplaces. Employees are expected to work with people whose experiences, perspectives, and communication styles may differ from their own as they solve problems and navigate complex challenges together.
Schools play an important role in intentionally creating the kinds of collaborative, discussion-based, and community-connected learning experiences where these competencies develop.
These opportunities for reflection, perspective-taking, collaboration, and real-world engagement help students build empathy alongside the communication and teamwork skills they will continue using throughout school and into their careers.
Ready to explore what this can look like in your district? Learn more about Global Leaders and how schools are helping students build career-ready skills through real-world learning.
For more resources on our ten global competencies, explore the other posts in this series.
Yes, empathy can be taught. Empathy develops through repeated opportunities to listen, reflect, collaborate, and consider perspectives beyond students’ own.
Schools help build empathy when students regularly participate in discussions, real-world learning experiences, and classroom activities that encourage perspective-taking.
Empathy development begins early in childhood. Young students build foundational skills through everyday experiences like sharing, listening, recognizing emotions, and learning how their actions affect others.
As students grow older, schools can expand those experiences through discussion, perspective-taking, community connections, and real-world learning across subjects.
One common challenge is inconsistency. When empathy-building only happens in isolated lessons or depends on individual teachers, students may not experience it regularly across classrooms and grade levels.
Schools tend to see stronger results when perspective-taking, discussion, collaboration, and reflection are built into everyday learning experiences throughout the school.
Empathy is difficult to measure through a single assessment, but educators can observe it in student interactions, participation, collaboration, and classroom culture.
Schools might look at how students engage in discussions, work through conflict, respond to community-connected learning, or reflect on different perspectives.
Global Leaders also includes grade-level empathy indicators that help guide instruction and observation.
Empathy supports learning by helping students communicate, collaborate, and participate more effectively in the classroom.
Students are often more willing to share ideas, ask questions, and engage in group learning when they feel respected, heard, and connected to the people around them.
In elementary school, empathy-building often happens through classroom routines, picture books, guided discussions, and local community connections.
As students move into middle and high school, they can engage more deeply with debate, global issues, research, perspective-taking, and community-connected projects that involve more complex discussion and reflection.
Empathy can be integrated into nearly every subject area.
In language arts, students might explore a character’s perspective. In social studies, they might examine how historical events affected different groups of people. In science, students can discuss how environmental or technological decisions impact communities differently.
When students regularly encounter these kinds of discussions across subjects, empathy becomes part of everyday learning rather than a standalone lesson.
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