Background/Context: Political divisiveness, racial reckoning, climate change, and mental health challenges represent just a few contemporary issues facing today's youth. Addressing these challenges now and in the future requires deep interpersonal understanding and collective action--neither of which can be achieved without empathy or prosocial behavior. Fortunately, we have decades of research on both of these skills (Bar-Tal, 1976; Eisenberg et al., 2009). However, the contours of this research call attention to three realities: (a) both skills can be cultivated in schools (Durlak et al., 2011); (b) empathy and prosocial behavior are strongly correlated (Barr & Higgins-D'Alessandro, 2007); (c) we have surprisingly little information about how these complementary skills can be cultivated together. Purpose/Objective/Research Questions: The current study was designed to not only extend our understanding of effectiveness of EL Education's model to develop character (EL Education, n.d., 2018), but to expand our toolkit of teaching practices that help to promote empathy and empathy-motivated prosocial responding (i.e., prosocial behavior motivated by empathy). Our research questions are: 1. How do students at EL Education and Comparison schools define empathy? 2. In what ways, if any, does empathy-motivated prosocial responding appear within students' definitions of empathy? 3. How do educators at EL Education and Comparison schools describe their practices for teaching empathy? 4. In what ways, if any, does empathy-motivated prosocial responding appear within educator's empathy teaching practices? Setting & Population/Participants/Subjects: Students attended nine middle schools (five EL Education and four Comparison) in four cities across the United States. Of the 23 student participants (16 EL Education, 7 Comparison), thirty-five percent identified as Black, 57% as White, and 52% as female. (See Table 1 for profiles.) Of the 18 educators interviewed (12 EL Education, 6 Comparison), eleven percent identified as Black, while the remaining 89% identified as White. Fifty-six percent identified as female and 44% identified as male. (See Table 2 for profiles). Research Design: A part of a larger quasi-experimental study, our primary approach was descriptive-interpretive design (Elliott & Timulak, 2021). This allowed for both surface level (descriptive) and deeper (interpretive) analysis. Guided by this approach, the research team developed open-ended and exploratory research questions and analysis strategies that aimed at better understanding how study participants defined and cultivated empathy across EL Education and Comparison schools. Data Collection and Analysis: All student interviews were conducted in-person at schools December 2019 February 2020. Educator phone interviews began in March 2020 and were suspended due to the pandemic. Some additional educator interviews were conducted in May 2020. A semi-structured interview protocol was used (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). Interviews lasted 15-30 minutes and were audio recorded for future transcription. Questions used in this analysis included: "What do you think empathy means?" for students and "How do you teach empathy in your classroom?" for educators. The analytic approach followed the descriptive-interpretive design (Elliott & Timulak, 2021). First, following verbatim transcription, the coding team gained familiarity with the transcripts, memoing initial thoughts or potential themes. Next, the team divided the data into distinctive meaning units and developed an organizational structure for the data (i.e., a consensus-built codebook; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The final step was to iteratively abstract the main findings. The first author defined categories, built prevalence tables, and established categorization thresholds. Rigor was ensured through maintaining an audit trail (Schwandt & Halpern, 1988) and engaging in regular internal and external audits. Credibility was addressed following the guidelines of descriptive-interpretive design, consulting with an experienced qualitative researcher throughout the process (Holloway, 1997), and using the participants' own words (Thomas & Magilvy, 2011). Findings/Results: Results showed three themes in student definitions of empathy: (a) "empathy" (i.e., affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and other empathy-related responses), (b) "prosocial behavior" (i.e., no mention of empathy, only prosocial behavior), and (c) "empathy-motivated prosocial responding." EL Education students and Comparison students were nearly equally likely to provide definitions as exclusively "empathy" (57% and 38%, respectively) and exclusively "prosocial behavior" (13% and 14%, respectively). EL Education students were more likely to define empathy as "empathy-motivated prosocial responding" (50% and 29%, respectively). (See Table 3 for details.) Results also showed that educators at both EL Education and Comparison schools utilized (a) "coaching," (b) "restorative practices," (c) "modeling," (d) "classroom opportunities," (e) "curriculum integration," and (f) "community spaces" to teach empathy. While both were nearly equally likely to use "coaching" (50% each) and "restorative practices" (8% and 17%, respectively), EL Education educators were more likely to use "modeling" (33% and 17%, respectively), "classroom opportunities" (33% and 17%, respectively), and "community spaces" (50% and 17%, respectively). On the other hand, Comparison school educators were more likely to use "curriculum integration" (50% and 17%, respectively). (See Table 4 for details.) Conclusions: Results show that "empathy-motivated prosocial responding" was a stronger theme in EL Education students' definitions, and teaching practices that promote both empathy and empathy-motivated prosocial responding were a stronger theme in EL Education educators' responses. EL Education students' responses indicated not a misunderstanding of what empathy is, but a belief that the practice of empathy is inextricably tied to prosocial action. Similarly, EL Education educators described practices that encouraged empathy and empathy-motivated prosocial responding from their students. One key limitation is our that sample sizes from EL Education and Comparison schools are not equivalent, even with extensive recruitment efforts and school partnerships. To address this, we report both counts and percentages, as well as the thresholds used for categorization for transparency. The teaching practices shared by both EL Education and Comparison school educators are important: they can be powerful as standalone opportunities, but as a larger community commitment, they have the potential to make interpersonal understanding and transformative collective action possible. We believe that supporting the development of empathy and empathy-motivated prosocial responding is critical to the wellness and success of young people--especially with the unique challenges facing their generation. By integrating these practices into our own classrooms and school communities, we can not only imagine, but create a better--and more empathetic--world.