Grateful Listening
Grateful Listening suggests that a person can create an interior posture that facilitates a quality of listening that is removed from critique or question.
Author:
Carol Gabrielli
Instructor, University Studies
Portland State University
Portland, OR 97207-0751
Background:
A key skill for a student in any learning environment is the ability to listen. In many courses—“Essentials of Physics,” “Principles of Economics,” “Conversational Spanish,” “History of Western Civilization”—it behooves the student to utilize listening to ensure her/his ability to retain, distill, and repeat the information being heard. These memory, making-sense-of, and duplication activities are rooted in inquisitive soil. At their best, all good courses encourage students to examine and wonder and doubt and believe and wonder again.
In diversity-related study and work, the act of retention, distillation, and repetition may be equally important. In this particular context, however, the listening requires an additional and different arduous demand of the student. It necessitates the strenuous task of simply listening. In some arenas this may be named “active listening” or “engaged listening”; I prefer the term “grateful listening.” Grateful listening suggests that, as the listener, I can create a posture or a place inside myself where all I am asked to do is simply hear another’s words and attempt to receive those words with some amount of thankfulness for the given perspective, the story, the experience. If the former practice is rooted in inquisitive soil, this latter practice stems from appreciative soil.
Preparation:
No preparation is needed.
Implementation:
Action One: In the first week of classes I ask students to contemplate the verb “to listen.” I ask them to wonder about the last time they listened to someone and/or the most recent time they had the experience of being listened to. Together we ponder how one might accurately determine when “listening” is occurring from either position. I pose this scenario: Suppose I ask Lindsey what she did over the weekend. When I ask, she tells me that on Saturday she and friends had a great Italian dinner at Nana Nina’s on Market Street. She goes on and on about the excellent service, the good wine list, the unparalleled eggplant parmesan and, finally, the creamy vanilla cannolis she and her friends enjoyed. At this point I ask my students to remind me what prompted this story of Lindsey’s. Often they astutely remember and note something like, “You asked her what she did over the weekend.” I respond by posing this to them: “What if the entire time Lindsey is telling me about her dinner with friends I am thinking this: I can’t believe she went to Nana Nina’s and thinks she had a good Italian meal or attentive service or nice wine. She can’t possibly know what real eggplant parmesan tastes like because if she did she would know theirs is made with processed cheeses, as are those “creamy” cannolis she raved about. If she wants good authentic Italian food, she should go to The Tuscany Room on Main. They have beautifully flavored and presented foods there, and they were just written up in The Metro Restaurant Guide. I should tell her that. As soon as she pauses to take a breath I’ll tell her so she knows for next time. I have an extra copy of The Metro Restaurant Guide. I will bring it in for her tomorrow. I will tell her that too. Am I really listening to Lindsey?” I ask my students. “Or is my purpose to deflate her experience, question her judgment, belittle her abilities and educate her with my wisdom?” Although they realize that this Lindsey and these restaurants are fictitious, their awareness of the truth of the story is profound. Without exception each of them can think of lived experiences from both sides—the story teller and the story requester. Often, it is a humbling and curious recollection. “If I’m this distracted and judgmental about restaurants and vegetables and cheese,” they wonder, “what am I doing when someone is talking to me about greater matters? How present am I?”
Action Two: Rigorous inquiry and critical thinking is revered in most learning environments. Noting, through discussion, the widely recognized value of each is important to students. Some students need this discourse to validate the practice. Once the worth of inquiry and critical thinking is acknowledged and distinguished, it is easier for students to entertain a dialogue regarding the shadow side of this skillful but sometimes hole-poking mindset.
Action Three: After a vibrant discussion filled with students’ lived experiences of being heard (or not) and being listeners (or not), I ask students to leave class with keener ears and perhaps more generous hearts and minds. By the next class, mere days later, their awareness of their capacity to listen has sharpened. Likewise their ability to discriminate another’s listening talent is augmented as well. We return to our theme and ask provocative questions: Why is grateful listening a tool worth acquiring/honing? How will it aid me in my relationships with others? How will it benefit me in my career? How will it benefit others companioning me in my career? What do I need to become a better grateful listener? What tools or techniques will help me experience a sense of thankfulness when hearing another’s story? What does that interior posture feel like? How can others support my intentions? When and where is it wise to employ grateful listening? How do I determine which situations warrant this posture? What is the cost to me and/or others if my grateful listening muscles go unused? How do I keep my desire for grateful listening sustained in crowds of zealous critical thinkers?
Action Four: Over the course of the term, students are invited to keep a listening journal. At the beginning students are asked to respond to the reflection questions listed in Action Two. I emphasize the importance of responding to the questions with detail and authenticity. No one is served by platitudes within the context of personal reflection. Additionally, as they progress through the course they record noteworthy experiences related to listening. These can include experiences in and out of class from all contexts. Weeks later, as the course is about to conclude, students are invited one more time to respond to the same set of reflection questions without a recent review of their previous answers. Finally, they are asked to contemplate both sets of responses. At this point I offer them a new set of questions to entertain: When I read and re-read my words, what do I notice? What do I acknowledge as helpful or hopeful? What do I find disturbing or unsettling? How have I noticed shifts in my behavior and my attitudes over the course of the term? How have I recognized shifts in the behavior and attitudes of others over the course of the term? What do I make of these awarenesses?
Additional Tools and Resources:
None needed or recommended.
Adaptability:
This can be done in a class of any size. In large lecture classes, students can participate in the discussions in Action Three by turning to their neighbors in small groups. In classrooms with fixed seating, some students will need to twist around to the row behind them to form small discussion groups. These groups can be given three minutes to discuss. The instructor can then ask just a few students to volunteer something that was said in their group. The small groups allow many more students to speak than would be possible otherwise, and asking for a few students to speak to the whole class will allow the class to have a common experience.
Author's Reflections:
What is most important here is that students have an opportunity to sincerely reflect on their capacity to listen and be heard. It is through this largely counter-cultural practice that they transform and allow for the transformation of others. As a teacher it is incumbent upon me to create a classroom environment where students can access their most authentic selves as learners. With this in mind, I try to model grateful listening in many of my reactions to them. For me, it is less about a right or wrong response to a question; rather, it is about a student’s enhanced awareness of self and others. Students’ paths to that increased awareness are varied, but the benefit from walking to that greater awareness in the community of one another is evident and prophetic.