L is for LISTENING
“Listening is an act of love.”
So says Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps.
StoryCorps one of my favorite projects in the world.
You can read all about it here - https://storycorps.org
StoryCorps travels around the country in an Airstream with recording equipment so people can sit face to face (ear to ear, really) and heart to heart and listen to each other’s stories.
The recordings are moving, sometimes so much so that I have to pull my car over to the side of the road to cry deep, deep tears of the heart.
I think about Isay’s precept every day at school.
How can I be a good listener?
It’s tough, sometimes.
I had a student who barely talked at all.
She never raised her hand during classroom discussions.
She never spoke unless spoken to (and didn’t speak more than a sentence and above a whisper, even then).
She always found her way to the end of the line, whether we were going to related arts, lunch, recess, or the bus.
She was a quiet kid.
She is a quiet kid still.
Since I wasn’t able to listen much to her, I talked with her teacher from last year about her.
“I did a project where I asked my students, ‘If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?’ said my teacher friend. “She wrote, ‘I would help my dad come to me from Mexico.’”
There it was.
Then I understood why she was a person of long and deep silences.
She loved someone and there was a wall, figuratively and literally, between them.
Though she was the quiet kid, and though she was carrying this heavy load in her heart, I wish you could have spent the day with her as a teacher as I did.
Her deep brown eyes were full of questions and curiosity, the kinds of questions and thinking that push the world forward and make it a better place for everyone.
She worked so hard to be the best person she could be and do the best work she could do.
Her words were few, but she has listening ears and a listening heart.
I hope you can hear her.
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