The Garden School Tattler

It's a rainy Monday and likely to be a rainy week. Rain always inspires me to do. Having grown up on an island in the San Francisco Bay, I find rain and fog delightful and comforting. So this week, our continuing a much confused week of Narnia last week because of the snow non-event is an obvious put together a bit like potatoes and ketchup!

We will continue to "listen" to Narnia and play listening games. Last week I whispered a short sentence to one child and he was supposed to whisper that to another, and he to another for about 4 whispers. Then the last child was supposed to tell the group what he heard. This was formerly known as telephone. It was amazing what the children did not hear. They got it wrong most of the time because they didn't listen.

Few people listen. There are all types. One type of listener walks out or zones out on the spoken sentence three words in. The "walker" doesn't listen out of habit. He is too busy with his own agenda to worry about what the speaker is saying because he doesn't care. Then when he wants to know what has already been said, he has to ask again. Directions for this kind of listener are a nightmare. At one time not too many years ago, this would have indicated Autism!

The next type of listener is the listener who only listens when he wants to. They call this selective listening. The selective listener blocks out large amounts of information for one reason or another, and my guess is that the information is either too hard to understand or it doesn't suit what they want now. It also allows them to avoid a lot of plain living and responsibility. We all know this type of listener.

Anther type of listener is the ammunition gathering listener who listens intently to what you say, and then shoots you with the information you've given him. This listening has a lot of catch words that are easy to identify: "But I thought you said..."

Then there is the silent listener - the listener who listens beautifully and refuses to respond. These people are like talking to a wall. You can talk and talk and talk and the response is a lame look.

The best child listener is the one who listens with good manners because it's expected, has fewer and fewer questions about the information, because the habit of listening has been made, and can freely offer what he has learned back to the teacher or another child who asks. That's the task, that's what we are looking for.

So why don't children all learn to listen well? Because for some children, models have been poor along the way, and unlearning a basic skill like listening takes a long time. That's why we do the Narnia thing. The Narnia film is a children's film with people - something many children are not used to watching. The story has many levels and many events, so the child has to listen in order to understand.

A film like Narnia establishes a kind of a learning through listening. Those children who can't really listen to the film don't get anything out of it. When they hear their classmates speak positively about it, they will take another look and hopefully begin to learn to listen. It's not always easy, and there is a certain maturity that is required to listen.

Listening well is one of the keys to academic success in big school. Learning to listen, and then listening to learn is a way of life we'd like each child to grab for his own and make his own style.