ABSTRACT
Due to a variety of factors, largely political in nature, we exist in an environment in which classroom teaching and teacher education focus strongly on the learning of isolated skills, strategies, and content matter (Pease-Alvarez, Samway, & Cifka-Herrera, 2010; Sleeter & Stillman, 2005). While attention to these components is arguably necessary, we also know that it is insufficient (Darling-Hammond, 2006a, 2006b). By narrowing the curriculum to a few of the more easily “testable” features—often in pursuit of higher standardized scores and federal funding that is tied to tightly circumscribed assessment mandates—we fail to attend to a condition that is less quantifiable but just as essential: teacher listening and learning. In this context, listening to learn is a process of deep engrossment (Noddings, 1992) in what students do and say. This is accompanied by a process of reflection that allows the teacher to act toward students in new and more effective ways according to what he or she discovers (Kaufman, 2000). Treated as an ingrained, systematic classroom practice, listening to learn from children about their multifaceted lives helps teachers to target their responses to each student’s current knowledge base, proclivities, and needs (Haroutunian-Gordon & Laverty, 2011; Kaufman, 2000; Lucas, Villegas, & Freedson-Gonzales, 2008; National Council of Teachers of English, 2006; Newkirk & Kittle, 2013). In the specific case of working with emergent bilinguals, who often have significantly different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds than those who teach them (Barron & Menken, 2002; Kindler, 2002), teacher listening and learning is all the more important: any lack of background knowledge that we have regarding emergent bilinguals makes it as difficult for us to teach them as their own lack of background knowledge may make it difficult for them to learn in English-dominant classrooms. In this chapter, I argue for our need to listen and learn as a conscious, continuous practice—and as a disposition that helps us to challenge ineffective existing practices—in order to best serve emergent bilinguals. I also present some of the teaching practices with which I have recently experimented (often in a trial-and-error fashion) in order to illustrate possibilities for reshaping curricula and instruction so that they promote a culture of sustained listening and learning.
