Compassion in Education

Kathy Erhardt
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

I have been teaching for 12 years and have worked with many great educators. My children have also had some dedicated and excellent teacher. The characteristics of a great educator are many; knowledgeable, organized, reflective, caring, flexible, persistent, and compassionate, to name just a few. We all have different amounts of these characteristics in our personalities, and they are all important. However I want to talk about compassion.

This past year has been very difficult for my family. A year ago we started a journey we did not want. My husband and father of my children started his final battle with metastatic melanoma. He was in and out of the hospital with surgeries, radiation treatments, chemotherapy, and pulmonary embolisms. he then was home on hospice for several weeks before leaving us 9 months ago. All of these events had great impact on my teenage daughters and myself. But what made the events bearable was the compassion shown by their teachers and my colleagues. The fact that they understood that this is what life was really about. They offered understanding, help, extensions of deadlines, relief of work load, extra tutoring, lesson planning for me and hugs. All of these extensions of compassion helped my daughters and myself survive this past year.

I write this to thank those that showed so much compassion. I also want to remind my fellow educators that the compassion and understanding you show your students and colleagues has immeasurable value. Remember you may know someone is going through a life altering event, or you may not know that their world is crashing down around them, but showing everyone compassion can provide a life vest for someone who may be drowning.