Tactical Empathy: The Power of Understanding in High School

We all know our classrooms are complex ecosystems. We juggle lesson plans, standardized tests, and most importantly, the dynamic energy of adolescents. Teaching is challenging work, but the most effective tool we have often sits unused. That tool isn't a new app or a textbook. It's tactical empathy.

What Tactical Empathy Really Is

Tactical empathy isn't just "being nice" or simply sympathetic. It's the intentional effort to understand the perspective of another person; their fears, their motivations, their view of the world before responding.

This concept comes directly from the world of high stakes negotiation. Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference, popularized this approach. Voss teaches that effective interaction begins not with pushing your point, but with understanding your counterpart's reality. As classroom professionals, we know this principle is gold.

Applying Voss’s Techniques

In a high school setting, tactical empathy looks like this.

Labeling Defensiveness 

When a student misses a major deadline, instead of defaulting to a punitive grade deduction, we pause. We use a technique Voss calls Labeling. We might say, “It sounds like something big happened to keep you from turning this in. That must be incredibly frustrating for you.” We label their emotion, we acknowledge their reality, and we open a dialogue. We aren't excusing the behavior; we’re seeking information and gaining the full picture.

Validation Over Argument 

When a student argues a grade fiercely, let's try not to view it as disrespect. Let's view it as passion for success coupled with poor communication skills. We can respond, “I hear that you feel this grade doesn't reflect the hard work you put in. Tell me what part of the assignment you think I might have misunderstood.” We validate their feeling, then we redirect the focus back to the objective criteria. We gain their respect by demonstrating we heard them. Voss emphasizes that "He who feels he has been heard is easy to talk to."

Deeper Learning

Tactical empathy is about recognizing that every disruptive action, every apathetic stare, every emotional outburst is a form of communication. It’s a signal that a student’s needs are unmet, a boundary has been crossed, or a trauma is active. It gives us the professional advantage of knowing where the student is truly coming from.

By employing this strategy, we move beyond simple classroom management. We build rapport. We foster trust. We create a learning environment where our students feel seen, heard, and safe enough to take intellectual risks. This leads not only to better behavior, but to deeper learning.

This week, commit to listening with the intent to understand, not just the intent to reply. Let's use Chris Voss's principles of tactical empathy to transform conflicts into connections and challenges into teachable moments. It's the secret weapon that elevates great teaching to truly impactful mentorship.

Do You Want Your Students to Understand, or Just Memorize?

We've all been there. A student raises their hand the day after your carefully prepared lecture and asks, "Can you explain that again?" You just spent forty minutes walking through the concept step-by-step. They took notes. They nodded along. But somehow, it didn't stick.

Here's the uncomfortable truth:

Lecture is designed for memorization, not understanding.

When we stand at the front of the room and deliver information, we're essentially asking students to be recorders. They copy down what we say, maybe highlight the important parts, and hope it makes sense when they review it later. This works fine for the students who already think the way we think. But for everyone else, we're just filling notebooks with words that will be regurgitated on a test and forgotten by next week.

The Gap Between Knowing and Understanding

There's a massive difference between knowing something and understanding it. A student can memorize that mitosis has four phases without understanding why cells divide. They can recite the Pythagorean theorem without grasping the relationship between the sides of a triangle. They can list the causes of World War I without comprehending the complex web of alliances and tensions that made war inevitable.

Memorization gets you through Friday's quiz. Understanding changes how you see the world.

Discussion: Where Understanding Happens

Real understanding requires something lecture can't provide: the chance to wrestle with ideas out loud. When students discuss a concept, they have to put it in their own words. They have to defend their thinking. They have to listen to someone else's perspective and reconcile it with their own. This cognitive struggle, this productive confusion, is where learning lives.

Think about the last time you really understood something new. Chances are, it wasn't from passively listening. It was from explaining it to someone else, debating it, or working through a problem and making mistakes. Discussion forces students to be active participants in their own learning rather than spectators in ours.

Making the Shift

I'm not suggesting we eliminate lecture entirely. Sometimes direct instruction is the most efficient way to deliver information. But we need to be honest about its limitations. If we want students to truly understand, we need to build in time for them to talk, to each other, not just to us.

Start small. After explaining a concept, pause and ask students to turn to a partner and explain it back in their own words. Pose a question that doesn't have one right answer and let students debate it in small groups. Replace some of your lecture time with Socratic seminars where students drive the conversation and you facilitate.

Yes, discussion is messier than lecture. It's harder to control, harder to predict, and harder to fit into a neat lesson plan. Students will say things that are wrong. They'll go off on tangents. It will feel less efficient.

But here's what will happen: students will think. They'll make connections you never would have made for them. They'll remember the idea they argued about far longer than the one you wrote on the board.

The Question We Should Keep Asking

Every time we plan a lesson, we should ask ourselves: Do I want my students to remember this temporarily, or understand it permanently? If it's the latter, we need to give them a voice in their own learning, which is something lecture can never provide.

Because at the end of the day, the best teachers aren't the ones who deliver the most polished lectures. They're the ones who create the space for students to think out loud, make mistakes, and build genuine understanding together.

The One-and-Done Myth: Hearing Isn't Understanding

We’ve all been there. Sitting in a professional development session, the speaker drops a new term, a fascinating instructional strategy, or a paradigm-shifting concept. We nod, we jot down a few bullet points, and an internal voice whispers, “Got it. I understand.”

But do we, really?

We need to come to grips with this simple truth: Just because you heard something once doesn't mean you understand it. This applies to our own learning as professionals just as much as it applies to the students sitting in our classrooms.

The Teacher Trap

Let’s be honest: our schedules are packed. When new information is presented, whether it’s a policy update, a new tech tool, or a deep dive into adolescent brain development, we try to absorb it quickly and move on. We might feel a rush of confidence after the initial exposure, mistaking recognition for retention and familiarity for fluency.

This "one-and-done" approach to our own learning is a trap.

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Hearing is not Application: 

You can hear a lecture on Differentiated Instruction 100 times, but until you've planned, executed, and reflected on a differentiated lesson, you don't truly understand the logistics, the challenges, or the power of it. Understanding comes from the messy work of putting the concept into practice.

-The Nuance is Missed:

Initial exposure gives us the broad strokes. The truly valuable, high-impact details, the nuances that make a strategy work, only reveal themselves upon repeated exposure, discussion, and critical analysis. When you hear about Collaborative Group Work once, you hear about groups. When you delve deeper, you discover the complex structures of effective roles, accountability, and productive conflict—the stuff that actually leads to learning.

For us to continue to grow as educators, we must be committed to revisiting, reflecting, and refining our knowledge, treating every new concept as a starting point, not a conclusion.

The Student Assumption

If we recognize this trap in ourselves, it makes the common classroom assumption even more glaring: the assumption that students understand a concept because we taught it.

We pour our energy into a 45-minute lecture on the causes of World War I or the proper use of the semi-colon. We ask, "Any questions?" and are met with silence. We conclude, "Great, they've got it!" and proceed to the next topic. But that silence isn't a sign of mastery; it’s often a sign of confusion, social anxiety, or cognitive overload.

The human brain, especially the developing teenage brain, requires repeated exposure, varied formats, and active engagement to move information from short-term memory to true understanding. Educational psychologist Robert Bjork calls this desirable difficulty. Understanding is not a passive event; it’s an active construction.

Strategies to Move Beyond the "One-and-Done" 

​To truly embed knowledge for both you and your students, embrace the power of active, verbal processing:

-​The "Explain It to the Partner" Check: 

Immediately after presenting a complex idea, have students explain the concept in their own words to a partner. The act of teaching and verbalizing forces them to process the information, identify gaps, and move beyond simply recognizing your voice.

-Group Discussions for Depth: 

Don't just quiz on vocabulary; use structured discussions like Harkness Discussions, Socratic Seminars or Fishbowl Debates. These methods require students to use the content—whether it's historical evidence, scientific principles, or literary analysis—to support an argument and respond to critique. True understanding is demonstrated when they can apply the knowledge in a dynamic, high-stakes conversation.

-​Encourage Disagreement and Synthesis: 

Structure discussions that require students to connect new information to prior knowledge and challenge each other’s interpretations (respectfully!). For instance, "How does this new economic theory complicate your previous understanding of the Great Depression?" The friction of synthesizing conflicting ideas creates a much stronger, deeper cognitive pathway than passive listening.

-​Practice Metacognition Aloud: During small group discussions, circulate and prompt students: "How do you know that?" or "What's the evidence in the text that supports your claim?" This pushes them to articulate their reasoning, helping them move past surface-level agreement into genuine intellectual ownership.

​The next time you’re planning a lesson or attending a workshop, remember this: Hearing is the seed; discussion is the active weeding and watering. The harvest of deep understanding only comes when we force ourselves and our students to actively speak, argue, and explain the concepts, moving the information from our notes and their passive listening into the active, audible space of genuine intellectual engagement.

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This week, commit to implementing one discussion-based strategy to make sure a concept is truly understood—not just heard—by your students.

Trust the Students: The High Standard of Belief

It's Tuesday. You're grading a stack of papers, managing an email inbox that never empties, and planning a lesson that has to be both engaging and aligned with five different standards. In the middle of this chaos, it’s easy to slip into a mindset of management, control, and, frankly, skepticism.

We spend so much time building scaffolding, creating rubrics, and designing systems to prevent failure that we sometimes forget the most powerful tool we have: trust.

The Power of Presuming Competence

Trusting your students isn't about ignoring deadlines or lowering expectations. It’s about radically shifting your starting premise. Instead of approaching your class as a group you need to police, try seeing them as a team you need to empower.

It’s the difference between, "I need a strict policy because they’ll probably cheat/procrastinate/do the bare minimum." and "I need to establish a meaningful goal because I trust them to figure out a path to achieve it."

When we presume incompetence, we communicate doubt, and students, with their uncanny radar, pick up on that immediately. Why should they invest deeply in a task if the very structure of the assignment suggests we expect them to fail?

Hold the Line, But Lead with Belief

This is where the balancing act comes in. Trust doesn't mean giving up standards; it means setting the standard even higher because you genuinely believe they can meet it.

The equation is simple:

High Standards + High Trust = High Achievement.

-High Standard

Don't simplify the material. Don't water down the complexity. Present the challenging text, the difficult problem, or the ambitious project. Be clear that the quality of work you expect is college-level, career-ready, and a true reflection of their intelligence.

-High Trust

Now, back it up with belief. When a student struggles, your response shouldn't be, "I knew this was too hard," but rather, "I know you can get this. Let’s figure out where the confusion started." Give them the autonomy to manage their time, choose their approach, and iterate on their failures. Hold them accountable, not through punitive measures, but through the integrity of the process.

When you trust them with the responsibility of meeting a high bar, they step up. They take ownership. They stop working for the grade and start working for the genuine pride of mastering something difficult.

The Project Mindset

Think about those projects where students get to direct their own learning. You give them a framework—a timeline, a required outcome—and then you get out of the way. You trust that, given the room to breathe and the expectation of excellence, they will deliver. And more often than not, the work they produce is their best, most passionate effort.

Your daily classroom can operate with that same energy. Give them the freedom within the structure. Trust them to be resilient. Trust them to manage their time. Trust them to ask for help when they genuinely need it, rather than when the system forces them to.

It's an investment, and like all true investments, it requires patience and a leap of faith. But the return, with students who are engaged, self-directed, and proud of the complex work they've done, is worth the risk. 

Trust your students. They are capable.

Beyond the Classroom: Cultivating a Mentor Mindset

As high school teachers, we spend our days navigating curricula, managing classroom dynamics, and preparing students for exams. But if we only focus on the content we deliver, we miss the most profound and lasting impact we can have. The secret to deeper fulfillment and more effective teaching isn't just in being an instructor—it's in cultivating a Mentor Mindset.

The Shift: From Instructor to Influence

An Instructor Mindset is essential, of course. It focuses on the external metrics: grades, test scores, curriculum coverage, and classroom control. Its goal is the efficient transmission of knowledge.

A Mentor Mindset, however, is oriented toward the internal growth of the student. It recognizes that every student who walks into your classroom is not just a brain ready to be filled, but a whole person grappling with identity, purpose, and the confusing path to adulthood.  This shift means seeing your primary role as fostering competence, character, and confidence—the internal architecture students need to succeed in college, career, and life.

Practical Ways to Mentor Daily

You don't need to add a formal "mentoring session" to your packed schedule to make this shift. A Mentor Mindset is embedded in your existing interactions:

-Focus on Process Over Product: When a student fails a test, an instructor focuses on the low grade (the product). A mentor focuses on the study habits, the time management, and the underlying learning process. Ask: "What did your preparation look like, and what small change can we test next time?" This teaches self-regulation.

-Validate the Struggle: Students often hide their confusion or frustration. A mentor creates a safe space for it. Instead of saying, "You should know this by now," try, "I see you’re frustrated. That means you’re challenging yourself, and that’s where real learning happens." You're normalizing difficulty and building resilience.

-Share Your Why: Why do you still read Moby Dick? Why is proper lab procedure important to you? Briefly connecting the content to your personal passion, life experience, or values shows students the material is a living thing. You're giving them a glimpse of how knowledge applies outside the textbook.

-Connect Past, Present, and Future: When a student makes a decision, good or bad, a mentor helps them connect that single moment to their bigger narrative. "How does missing this deadline align with the goals you told me you have for college?" or "That was a really thoughtful piece of work—that's the kind of dedication that will serve you well in the future." You’re teaching forethought and responsibility.

The Sustained Impact 

Shifting to a Mentor Mindset is the ultimate move toward internal motivation for you. While the external rewards of teaching (the low pay, the endless paperwork) can be exhausting, the internal reward of seeing a student find their direction, develop character, or gain genuine self-confidence is immeasurable.

When you invest in the whole person, the academic results often follow, but more importantly, you leave behind something that lasts: a self-aware, resilient, and resourceful adult. That’s not just teaching—that’s legacy building. 

The Lecture Paradox: Why Less Talking Can Lead to More Learning

We've all been there: a room full of students, a syllabus to get through, and the familiar urge to just tell them what they need to know. Lecturing feels efficient, right? You can cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. But what if that efficiency is an illusion, masking a deeper problem of ineffectiveness? 

Research suggests that while lecturing is a cornerstone of traditional education, it's often the least effective way to help students truly learn and retain information. 

The Research Doesn't Lie: A Passive Approach Yields Passive Results

Decades of research have shown that students retain very little from a purely passive lecture format. A landmark study by Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard University, highlighted the shortcomings of traditional lectures. He found that even after a clear and well-explained lecture, students struggled to solve conceptual problems. This led him to develop "Peer Instruction," a method that flips the script and gets students actively engaged.

Another key finding comes from the work of Edgar Dale and his "Cone of Experience." While his model is often misinterpreted, the core idea is sound: active learning leads to better retention. We remember more of what we do than what we hear. Listening to a lecture is a "passive" activity, while doing an experiment, teaching a concept to a peer, or solving a problem are "active" and lead to deeper understanding.

From Talking Head to Learning Catalyst: Harkness-Style Small Groups in Math

If a purely passive lecture is out, what's in? The answer is to transform our classrooms into dynamic, interactive spaces. Instead of simply being the "sage on the stage," you can become the "guide on the side" by leveraging the power of Harkness-style small groups. This method, inspired by the Harkness philosophy from Phillips Exeter Academy, places students at the center of the learning process. The goal is to move the ownership of the problem-solving and conceptual understanding from you to the students. This approach may feel slower at first, but it leads to a more profound and lasting impact on student learning.

Here’s a practical guide to implementing small-group, Harkness-style discussions in your math classroom with 5-6 groups of 4-5 students each:

-The Pre-Work: The success of these discussions depends on student preparation. Assign a set of challenging problems or a conceptual reading for students to work on before class. These should be non-standard problems that can be solved in multiple ways or require a deeper understanding of a concept rather than just rote application of a formula. Require them to come to class with their work, even if it's incomplete or incorrect.

-The Setup: Arrange your classroom into 5-6 small, circular or oval groups. Each group should have a whiteboard or a large piece of paper in the center for students to work out problems together, draw diagrams, or write down different approaches.

-The Discussion: Facilitating Learning from Prepared Work

In class, the discussion centers on the challenging problems students have already worked on. Your role is to shift the focus from getting the right answer to understanding the conceptual reasoning behind it. For example, rather than simply going over the steps to solve the quadratic profit problem, have students discuss their different approaches and any confusion they encountered. This peer-to-peer conversation allows students to teach each other how they understood the meaning of the vertex, the roots, and the parabola's shape within the context of the business problem. The goal is to deepen their understanding of the underlying mathematical concepts through collaborative discussion, using their pre-work as the starting point.

-The Facilitator's Role: Your job isn't to join a group and show them how to solve the problem. Instead, you circulate among the groups, listening in and offering guidance when needed. You can ask follow-up questions to push their thinking ("What does a negative profit mean in this context?"), redirect a group that's stuck ("Can you try graphing this function to see what's happening?"), or point out a different approach that a student in another group discovered. The conversation should be driven by students, not you.

 -Reflection

​Dedicated five minutes at the end of class for reflection within each small group or for students to reflect on their own. Ask students to consider their group's process:

​"What was a turning point in your group's discussion?"

​"What did you learn from a group member's approach that you hadn't considered?"

​"Where did your group get stuck, and what helped you move past it?"

"What positive contributions did you make to the discussion?"

​This approach encourages metacognition, helping students to not only understand the problem but to also reflect on their own thinking and collaborative process. By focusing on the journey rather than just the solution, you're teaching them that learning is an active, reflective process.

These strategies empower students to take ownership of their learning, develop critical thinking and communication skills, and build a more inclusive and dynamic classroom community.

Unlock Engagement: Why "Let Them Discover" is Your New Teaching Superpower

We’ve all been there: standing at the front of the classroom, pouring our heart and soul into a meticulously crafted lecture, only to be met with a sea of glazed-over eyes. We see students checking out, doodling in notebooks, or discreetly scrolling on their phones. Our immediate instinct can be to tighten the reins, speak louder, repeat ourselves, or even worse, micromanage every minute detail of their learning experience. We believe we’re helping them by controlling the flow of information, but what if this very control is actually disengaging them?

This is where Mel Robbins’ "The Let Them Theory" offers a powerful paradigm shift for our classrooms. While Robbins typically applies it to personal relationships, its core principles are profoundly relevant to teaching. 

1. "Let Them" (Discover): 

In a traditional classroom, "letting them" might sound terrifying. "Let them just do whatever they want?" No, that’s not it at all. Instead, it means letting them grapple with ideas, letting them form their own connections, and letting them articulate their understanding – even if it’s not perfectly aligned with your internal script at first.

Think about it: how much mental energy do we expend trying to force-feed content? How much frustration builds when students don't "get it" exactly the way we've presented it? "Letting them" discover means trusting the process of active learning. Instead of lecturing for 20 minutes on the causes of the Civil War, what if you posed a provocative question, provided a few primary source documents, and then simply… let them discuss?

Imagine a classroom buzzing with debate, students challenging each other's interpretations, and collaboratively piecing together the historical narrative. You're still the expert, the guide, the facilitator, but you've shifted from being the sole dispenser of knowledge to the architect of an environment where knowledge is actively built by your students. This doesn't mean a free-for-all; it means structured discussions, Socratic seminars, and project-based learning where students are empowered to explore.

2. "Let Me" (Guide and Empower): This is where you reclaim your energy and focus it on what you can control and what truly makes an impact. Instead of micromanaging every step, you focus on:

-Designing powerful questions: Questions that spark curiosity, encourage critical thinking, and lead to deeper inquiry.

-Curating rich resources: Providing a diverse range of materials—texts, videos, images, data—for students to analyze and synthesize.

-Establishing clear expectations and rubrics: Giving students the framework they need to succeed while allowing them agency in how they get there.

-Providing targeted feedback: Intervening not to give them the answer, but to guide their thinking and push them further.

-Cultivating a safe and inclusive environment: One where every voice feels valued, and mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth.

When you embrace "Let Them Discover," you move from being a lecturer struggling for attention to a facilitator igniting passion. You stop trying to control every brain in the room and start empowering them to control their own learning journey. The result? More engaged students, deeper understanding, and a more fulfilling teaching experience for you.

So, the next time you feel the urge to "just tell them the answer," take a breath and try to "let them" explore. You might be amazed at what they discover – and what you rediscover about the joy of teaching.