The CEA Forum - Winter/Spring 2007 - Special Section: Empathy and Ethics - It's Written on Their Faces: The Rhetoric of Empathy

Oct 15, 2026

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A reflective essay from the CEA Forum (Winter/Spring 2007) explores how writing teachers can use rhetorical empathy to shape students’ engagement and elevate personal writing into public discourse. It frames empathy, acknowledgment, and trust as emotional labor, then develops a narrative of teaching experience with a student navigating a failed senior seminar and demanding coursework. The piece emphasizes guiding deadlines, offering structured response and revision, and balancing accountability with compassionate recognition.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time12 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Empathetic acknowledgement and rhetorical awareness

Opportunity knocks and I reluctantly open the door

A student’s background and the senior seminar challenge

A brief history of my life as a responder to student writing

The CEA Forum Winter/Spring 2007: 36.1 SPECIAL SECTION: EMPATHY AND ETHICS IT'S WRITTEN ON THEIR FACES: THE RHETORIC OF EMPATHY Darrell Fike Introduction In a reflection on her teaching practices, Wendy Bishop in Teaching Lives suggests that over time she became a“social expressivist,” in that by writing about her own teaching she learned “to develop a personal voice within the public matrix of professional communities”(ix) . For the compositionist committed to the personal essay as a medium that engages students' interests and creativity in meaningful ways, Bishop's belief that one can use personal reflection to enter and enhance public discourse presents the writing teacher with a challenge: that of offering empathetic acknowledgement of the student writer's individual experience while encouraging rhetorical awareness of the topic and audience beyond the self. This essay examines the emotional labor—acknowledgement, empathy, trust—that writing teachers can employ rhetorically to guide student writers towards a more public and profound discourse. DISCLAIMER : I am not nor have I ever been a counselor or psychologist, though a few family members and most of my colleagues would say I am long overdue for therapy. I. Opportunity knocks and I reluctantly open the door When Janet appeared in the doorway of my office late one afternoon during the second week of spring semester, I have to confess that I was not exactly thrilled to see her. I had already been besieged by other seniors that week as they sought readers for their capstone course projects. At my school, seniors must assemble a committee of three readers to review their work, so as soon asthe project is introduced they scurry about the department enlisting sympathetic—or the merely available—faculty to join their committees. My second thoughts at seeing Janet in my doorway were not only a result of my already having agreed to serve on five other committees that semester but also my awareness that Janet had signed up for the senior seminar at least once—maybe twice—before. It is not unusual for seniors to begin the capstone course and then drop it when faced with the prospect of the tasks involved. Indeed, upon asking around, I discovered that Janet had apparently had disagreements with her faculty readers and the instructor of record for the seminar the semester before and had failed the course, not dropped it, but failed. Since she had to pass the course to graduate, she had to take it again, only this time she had to pass or else. So when she appeared in my door, I knew immediately that she had come to me not so much out of preference as out of necessity. Apparently, when you burn too many bridges, any spindly crossing or fallen log to the other side looks good. Her project, an extended creative nonfiction essay, technically fell under the jurisdiction of the creative writing faculty, but since she had already been there and done that so to speak, she had come to see me. Prior to the department hiring an “official” creative nonfiction teacher, I had led Janet and about 20 other students through an introductory creative nonfiction course, so I was somewhat familiar with her work and her habits. Even among the interesting array of students drawn to the creative nonfiction course, Janet had been unusual in several ways. A transfer student, she introduced herself to us and revealed a checkered academic past that included various majors at several different colleges that she had abandoned for both academic and personal reasons. Although she had an imposing physical presence and a dramatic sense of fashion that had her in dreadlocks and tie-dye one week and a business suit and heels the next, she often was rather quiet during class discussions unless pushed to join in, and then she always had a lot to say and would bluntly state her opinion and let the chips fall where they may. So taking a cue from her own sense of keeping it real, I asked Ja

FAQs

What challenge does the essay pose for composition instructors and writing teachers?

It challenges teachers to acknowledge a student writer’s individual experience empathetically while also cultivating rhetorical awareness of topic and audience beyond the self.

What does the essay describe as emotional labor in teaching writing?

It characterizes emotional labor as the combined work of acknowledgement, empathy, and trust that teachers rhetorically use to guide student writers toward deeper, more public discourse.

How does the author approach helping Janet through the senior project course?

The author sets firm expectations for deadlines and sign-off, requires drafts and teacher responses, and insists on producing a finished, polished, original piece of writing.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by SANS