“Listening is an act of love.”
So says Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps.
StoryCorps is a project that provides space for people to listen to each other.
The project travels around the country in an Airstream with recording equipment so people can sit face to face (ear to ear, really) and ask each other questions 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 the deep, deep tears of the heart.
I think about Isay’s precept every day at school.
How can I be a good listener to my students?
It’s tough, sometimes.
I have a student who barely talks at all.
She never raises her hand during classroom discussions.
She never speaks unless spoken to (and doesn’t speak more than a sentence or above a whisper, even then).
She always finds her way to the end of our line, whether we’re going to related arts, lunch, recess, or the bus.
She is a quiet kid.
Since I haven’t been able to listen much to her yet (I believe my Trevor magic will get through to her by Christmas ), I listened to her last year’s teacher to learn a little bit more about her.
“I did a project where I asked my students, ‘If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?’ She wrote, ‘I would help my dad come to me from Mexico.’”
There it is.
Now I know why she is a person of long and deep silences.
She loves someone and there is a wall, figuratively and perhaps soon literally, between them.
Though she is the quiet kid, and though she is carrying this heavy load in her heart, I wish you could spend the day with her as a teacher as I do.
Her deep brown eyes are full of curiosity, the kind of thinking that pushes and pulls the world forward and makes it a better place for everyone.
Everyone.
She works so hard to be the best person she can be and do the best work she can do.
Her words are few, but she has listening ears and a listening heart.
I hope we do, too.
- trevor scott barton, Advent Notebook, 2021
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