Great Teachers

There was a Primary School Head I worked with in Devon - fabulous woman, who once called a halt in the middle of Assembly, got everyone to their feet, and taught them how to tango. Apart from having great fun, the school excelled on all the government-ey tick lists that schools live and die by these days.

And in Assembly, when the kids weren't dancing or singing, they would be sitting listening: she had this way of commanding the entire hall, asking everyong if they had their 'listening ears' on - and she'd make this gesture, as though she was slipping on magic invisible ears (as opposed to, you know, ordinary invisible ears...) - and a zillion kids would imitate her, and listen carefully with their magic ears.

So I've been thinking about listening today. When someone's speaking - relating an experience, or telling a story - about what kind of commentary the internal monologue comes up with. I remember reading something by Thich Nhat Hanh years back: about how often, our version of listening is actually just a process of comparison. Someone says something and we line it up by our own opinions, and if it's a match we consider it to be 'true' and if it's different then clearly 'false'. And I read on, thinking his conclusion might be to be less judgemental or more accepting, but his point was this: if that's how we listen, then whether the statement is 'true' or 'false' is irrelevant; if that is how we listen, we learn nothing.

And a decade later, I'm still getting the hang of those listening ears.

Have a great weekend, folks :-)