Empathy is more than a buzzword—it’s a foundational skill. The ability to recognize and understand others’ emotions—and to respond in ways that are constructive and caring—can help adolescents build strong peer relationships, navigate conflict, and contribute to a more connected school community.
But for adolescents, empathy isn’t always straightforward. During this time of rapid cognitive, emotional, and social development, young people are not only building the capacity to understand others’ perspectives—they’re also figuring out when and how to act on that understanding in meaningful ways. The middle school years are particularly unique. On average, youth experience a drop in social awareness (the broader competency that includes empathy) around sixth grade that doesn’t start to recover until about ninth grade.
In two recent studies, our research team spoke with middle school students and educators to better understand how empathy and prosocial behavior take shape in real classrooms. We worked with schools across the nation, including EL Education schools, a national network grounded in whole-child development.
What we found was hopeful: Early adolescence, while complex, is also a rich window for developing skills like empathy and prosocial behavior. With the right strategies and a supportive environment, schools can help empathy take root in ways that last.
How teenagers experience empathy
In the first study, we asked middle school students about how they experience empathy in real life—those moments when they notice a peer’s emotions, try to understand what that peer is going through, and decide how (or whether) to respond.
From their stories, a three-part process emerged: Youth prepared to empathize, engaged in cognitive empathy, and chose to respond with prosocial behavior.
One key component of preparing to empathize is listening. One student showed what it meant to prepare to empathize by saying: “Just to be understanding and not be like, ‘Wow, that’s nothing to be mad about or sad about or anything.’ It’s just to be understanding and be like, ‘Yeah, I could see how you feel like that,’ and just be all-around nice.”
Another student shared an example of both cognitive empathy and prosocial responding: “One of my friends was having trouble with another friend and I stood by her side and helped her through the whole thing because I had gotten into an argument with my friends in the past and so I know what it felt like.”
Students spoke candidly about what made empathy more challenging during middle school. Some described how they “masked” their own emotions to fit in, which made it harder for peers to recognize what they were feeling. Others described feeling overwhelmed, misunderstood, disconnected from peers, or afraid to challenge others who lacked empathy, all of which made it harder to respond with empathy themselves. Still, many expressed a strong desire to help their peers; they just didn’t always know how, or didn’t feel confident following through.
These insights offer a clear takeaway: Adolescents are capable of empathy and often want to be there for others—but they need support in order to do so.
What empathy looks like in classrooms
In the second study, we interviewed both middle school students and their educators. We asked: How is empathy taught in these schools—and how do students themselves understand what it means? We then compared the views of educators and students at EL Education schools with those at other schools.
EL Education’s approach is designed to help students become effective learners, ethical individuals, and contributors to a better world. As part of this mission, they embed practices into the student experience aimed at developing character, including empathy. Our study explored how attending an EL Education school relates to students’ definitions of empathy and the teaching practices they experience.
Educators described six core practices for cultivating empathy: modeling, coaching, restorative practices, opportunities to practice, curriculum integration, and creating community spaces. These weren’t standalone lessons—they were embedded in a broader school culture where empathy was practiced, reflected on, and reinforced as a shared value.
We discovered that EL Education teachers used modeling, classroom opportunities, and community spaces to teach and practice empathy. In contrast, teachers at the comparison schools were more likely to describe integrating empathy into their academic instruction.
EL Education students, in turn, often defined empathy not just as understanding someone’s emotions, but as a call to action. We observed a strong theme of empathy-motivated prosocial behavior among students in EL Education schools—they were more likely to describe kind or helpful behaviors motivated by understanding or sharing in someone else’s feelings or perspective. To these students, empathy wasn’t a feeling to have, but a skill to use, something practiced in real moments of connection.
“For me, empathy is the ability to understand what people are going through, like being able to imagine what it’s like to be them in the situation that they’re in,” said one student. “The most important part of empathy is . . . being able to help, in my opinion.”
Those student definitions—and the actions they described—reflected the very practices their teachers emphasized: empathy not as a standalone concept, but as a lived, practiced skill embedded in daily interactions and school culture.
Turning insight into action
Taken together, these studies offer a roadmap for how schools can nurture empathy and prosocial behavior during the critical window of adolescent development. Empathy, we found, isn’t a single skill—it’s a process. Adolescents need support in noticing others’ emotions, engaging in perspective taking, and building the confidence to respond with meaningful, prosocial behavior.
Our research points to three key elements of effective empathy education:
1. Use intentional practices. Empathy can be cultivated through everyday routines. In their teaching, educators can use stories to explore multiple viewpoints and weave reflection and dialogue into lessons. All staff can model empathic listening, coach students through moments of conflict, and celebrate when empathy is put into action. As one educator told us:
[T]he kids in one of my classes just looked really rundown, really worn out, and I looked at them and I was like, “What’s up? Y’all look a little rundown. You look almost mad, overstressed, or something.” And they were like, “We are.” And I was like, “OK. Put your head down.” And I turned on soft music, I turned off all the lights, and I said, “Can you take a five-minute nap and then we’ll learn?” And so I empathized with them because I was like, “Sometimes I need it, too.”
One educator identified a unique way to integrate empathy into instruction through journaling:
I do a lot of journal work in my class. Every day is a journal, and a lot of times that is a social-emotional learning where I say, “Hey, here’s a situation. How would you feel in this situation? How would you react? Here’s another solution. What do you think is fair in this situation?” You know, “How do you feel when this happens and that happens?”
2. Develop strong relationships. Connection and trust are the foundation for empathy. When students feel a sense of belonging—both with peers and with adults—they’re more likely to open up, take perspective, and respond with care. Practices like advisory create intentional space for students to reflect, repair, and deepen their relationships. This educator describes a classroom mishap and the ways that the students responded to the situation with empathy, offering them a chance to strengthen their bonds:
We were doing this classic thing where you all stand in a circle and try to pass a hula hoop around, everybody’s holding hands and you have to shimmy the thing over your shoulders and step through it and all this thing. We had a student with limited mobility and only control of half of her body. Of course, I didn’t think of that when I planned a lesson. . . . It was apparent she was going to struggle when that hula hoop got to her because of her lack of control. But the kids standing next to her were able to put a little extra in, well, they kind of saw the problem coming down the line. They’re like, oh, this student’s going to struggle with this. They kind of put themselves and contorted their bodies in a way to assist her and gave her some instructions so that she could fully participate.
3. Cultivate supportive environments. A schoolwide culture that values empathy and prosocial behavior helps these skills take root and grow. Leadership plays a critical role in setting this tone—making care and connection visible, embedding them in shared norms, and ensuring they’re reinforced across classrooms, hallways, and community spaces. When empathy and prosocial behavior are built into the fabric of school life, adolescents grow to see them as collective commitments, not just personal choices. This educator coached their students on perspective taking to tap into how students might feel in certain situations and then what to do as a consequence of that understanding:
And there’s this time during class where I’d pull someone aside and say, “Hey, how do you think this person would feel? How would you feel if someone said this to you or someone did this to you? Now that’s probably how they might be feeling right now. What would you do about it?”
Another educator described how his class created community commitments.
When we have sixth graders coming in, we keep them for two years, we do talk about the norms for our group . . . about how to function as a group, to meet goals, to achieve things, to work together. And then we talk to them about what they’re going to bring to the group, and they make a contract of what they’re going to bring to the group. So, in some ways some of that is getting at the empathy part of recognizing the whole of the group.
When these elements come together, schools don’t just teach empathy—they create the conditions for students to live it. Adolescents begin to see empathy not just as something they feel, but something they do—and something they can choose to do, again and again. That helps students become not only more caring classmates—but also more compassionate and engaged members of their communities.
As one student explained, “If you do something, you influence the people around you, and then they influence people around them. . . . In the end, it’d take a long time, but the whole world would be empathetic.”
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