8.1 About “I’m worried about what this means”

Like doesn’t sound like and experience, the last three scoring items all use the same scoring criteria. As with the last two items, we recommend using the individual scoring guides for each items because the examples help illuminate the differences between the items. All three of these items focus on how the teachers respond when presented with an empathetic opportunity by the parent– what do they do when the parent shares a worry or something that is wrong? For each of the items, we are looking to see if the teacher acknowledges what the parent says and then follows up. We’ve got that fleshed out a lot more in the next section!

The first empathy item, worry, is different than the other two. The other two focus on dad sharing about things in his own life. A strong response for those requires the teacher to engage with dad about what he has going on. This first item, however, is the parent sharing a worry about Katie. Responses that would be scored low for the other two empathy items because the teacher is just focused on the student can be scored high here! As you work through the next three scoring items, keep in mind that even with the same scoring criteria, what is scored high, medium, or low varies by item!