I Hear You: Poetry as a Tool for Emotional Literacy and Empathy Education HAYDEN MacKINNON
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s I hid under the table, clutching the chrome legs of my second-grade desk, I could hear my teacher reading to my parents a poem I had written a few days before. She kindly praised my use of imagery, descriptive language, and the ways I established a sense of voice—high praise, indeed, for an eight-year-old. You see, even as young as the tender age of eight, I had discovered something in writing poetry that resonated with me in a deeply personal way. And when my teacher read it out (to my parents of all people), it felt to me like something authentic, creative, and new had just been unearthed, something I didn’t know how to make sense of at the time, hence me hiding under the desk. Over twenty-five years later, I’m still writing poetry, still putting words together in new ways in order to express something deeply personal and, hopefully, say something meaningful to others. Since then I’ve also had the privilege of teaching poetry to students in various schools from K to 12. Writing over the years has only deepened my love of the craft and set me on a journey to find new ways to excite my students about poetry and to understand themselves better in the process. Poetry is a powerful tool not only for helping us see the world in a new way but also as a means of growing in our own “emotional literacy”—or the way we understand and are able to articulate our own feelings, hopes, and desires. The more poems we read—the more we engage with the tightly woven narrative fabrics of good poetry—the more we are able to understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. Something interesting I have found and have begun to explore in my role as a poet and teacher is that in addition to helping us understand our own emotions, poetry can also lead us to a place of greater understanding of the emotions of others; that is, it moves us toward a greater, more fully developed sense of empathy. The specific kind of empathy I speak of is known as “emotional empathy” and has been defined as the moments when “you physically feel what other people feel, as though their emotions were contagious” (Goleman). The importance of learning about and growing in empathy can’t be understated, and teaching these skills may be some of the most relevant and applicable life lessons we leave our students with, because in today’s society it is easier than ever for young people to become isolated, self- absorbed, and lost in the endless social media messages of “it’s all about me” and “I am the most important person”; in other words, we live in a society that has become—when left unchecked—very good at fostering narcissism (Vater et al.). Christian Educators Journal December 2021 19
The more we engage with the tightly woven narrative fabrics of good poetry—the more we are able to understand ourselves, others, and the world around us.
