Hear the Future Song
“Stop, Look, Listen to your heart”: What We Can Become When We Listen
We cup our hands to our ears. “Listen to your neighbor,” says our choir leader. We walk in tight wandering patterns in a small space, tuning in to the other voice parts as we cross paths, keeping our own notes going while hearing the collective harmony.
****
Months and a pandemic after this winter choir circle, sitting on my back stairs on a sunny morning, a virtual eulogy zooms through my headphones, and the pastor says, “Even though he lost his hearing, he never lost the ability to listen.”
****
I’m a teacher, it’s Fall 2020, and I’ve never felt the need to be so attuned to listening as I do now.
This summer, a group of teachers found our way to GMWP as a familiarly fresh home for conversation.
Our virtual and physical purpose for meeting was rooted in the need for intentional, radical change in education that, if we listen, our young people — and ourselves, our colleagues, our families — have been crying out for for a while now.
A pandemic that shifted our practice as educators; one more, two more, too many more murders of Black lives, held our faces right up to the open wound of our roles as teachers in a stressful and inequitable system.
Before clicking on the GMWP zoom link this summer, my mind was abuzz with so much noise, worry, and questioning of where to go with all of the uncertainties about how to be a teacher during this time. After meeting together, while still heavy-hearted with many parts of reality, many uncontrollable factors, many controllable factors that aren’t controlled, I think we all did feel a bit more of a harmonious direction for where we might go in the face of all of this.
Seeing as I haven’t seen a printer for a few months now, I hand wrote the design principles we crafted as a collective group during that GMWP week. I stuck that scribbled sheet in a stack with all my rosters and schedules in a binder I’ve labeled “Learning 2020–2021.”
Since this summer, in my overflowing “day job,” I’ve tried to listen to how students pronounce their names by using a flipgrid prompt. I’ve tried to listen to how students feel most engaged during this time with a simple survey. I’ve tried to listen to students’ silence on the other side of the zoom, turning to curiosity instead of frustration by asking a simple question for students to reply to in the chat. I’ve tried to listen to students during lightning fast five minute one-on-one introduction zoom meetings. I’ve tried to listen to parents tell me how their child is doing. I’ve tried to listen to Educational Assistants as they work to help students. I’ve tried to listen past the ambient house sounds that many students are hearing throughout their school day — screaming siblings or table conversations right by their computers or parents on their work calls in the next room…the occasional heart warming shake of floppy dog ears.
And my next ongoing work is figuring out what to do with that listening. What do we do in a conversation when we are being a compassionate, attuned listener?
What do we do when we are singing in a choir and listening to the different parts? What do we do when we keep getting older and older every day and keep trying to discern when the ways that we used to listen need adjusting? Well, I think we adjust — keeping parts of what we knew about listening, while leaning on a group of committed co-conspirators to experiment and stick to our morals. I’m so grateful to GMWP, my design group, my colleagues, and to the young people I teach for continuing to teach me not just about listening, but about what to do with what is heard. To those students: My goal is to hear you because, lovely people, the world needs to hear you. You are the future, and your struggles, your excitements, your voice is a song the world needs right now.
