Tuesday, January 30, 2024
A reflection by Sara Knueve
Policy Initiatives Advisor at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
Can you call to mind a time when someone genuinely listened to you? Can you remember the topic? More importantly, can you remember how you felt and the quality of the interaction? My guess is this memory has an impact on you. I have come to believe listening is one of the most underutilized skills we have AND it is one skill we most desperately need to use right now.
My life has been shaped in such a way that I have practiced the art of listening since a young girl. My family moved around a fair amount and I attended four different Wisconsin rural school districts over my own K-12 schooling. I realized quickly that if I were to fit in and keep up in school, I needed to deeply listen -- to my teachers, my classmates, to my neighbors -- to anyone who would talk to me. There were hidden rules in every small town and I was not in the know.
I continued to develop this skill of listening and I went on to become a social worker. I worked in the Madison Metropolitan School District for almost 20 years. Thousands of stories have been shared with me over time.These stories help me understand the very uniqueness of each student, teacher, district and community and help me understand the very many places of commonality and connection.
These themes of uniqueness and commonality are surfacing as the DPI has toured the state, listening to communities as they help inform the state-wide strategic plan. As January comes to a close, we will have traveled to 16 communities throughout the state and hosted three well-attended virtual online sessions. One of the ground rules for DPI staff is that we simply listen. Listen to learn. Listen to record peoples' voices. We have heard from students to elders, from small districts to the large, from educators and everyday citizens. We will distill these themes over the next few months and draft a plan that reflects your suggestions, your concerns, and your dreams for all learners in Wisconsin.
Listening isn’t just something we do when we have big questions. It’s something we can do every single day to improve our relationships and the outcomes of our work. But at the heart of it, listening is about connecting and opening ourselves up to each other. It’s about establishing and maintaining relationships of openness, candor, and trust. We can name the feelings about a future that seems uncertain AND a hope that schools can be a place of calm, normalcy, and predictability.
In these times when in the public sphere many talk over or past one another (if they talk to one another at all), it is essential for you to know that at the DPI, we are listening. We know that the future we are all helping to shape requires all voices to be heard.