Are we teaching our children how to listen for understanding? I fear that, if they are learning by our society’s example, we are teaching them only how to listen to respond. And that is doing a major disservice to our next generation.
I get a lot of grief about my love for protocols. I’m looking at you, Bismarck friends. But I believe they can give structure to human interactions so that we can minimize instinctual reactions and engage in more meaningful and reflective dialog. The Communication Model shows us that effective communication has both a sender and a receiver. It also shows us that for communication to be complete, the receiver must decode the message.
In many instances, our natural reaction to information we don’t fully understand or is in opposition to our status quo is to verbally refute it. Protocols can give us a construct where participants are required to reflect individually on the information before forming a verbal or written reply. When we know ahead of time that we will have time to formulate a response, we don’t need to spend our effort multi-tasking our listening. We can listen to understand and then think to respond.
In my post on presentations in the classroom, I focused heavily on evaluating the communication sender. My primary goal was evaluating what they had learned and how they had learned it. However, I stated that my second goal was to help other students cover any gaps in their own learning/understanding. If that goal was to be achieved, I should have also evaluated that achievement. Unfortunately for my students, I didn’t learn about many of my favorite protocols until I was no longer teaching in a regular classroom. In not providing a protocol for this, I completely cut off the second part of the communication model. There was no context for decoding the message and providing feedback to the sender. I wasn’t even teaching listening to respond, let alone listening for understanding.
One of my favorite protocols is the 3-2-1 Protocol. In it, the listeners are given time (2-5 minutes depending on the length of the presentation) to write 3 things they learned, 2 things they found interesting or “ah-has”, and 1 thing they still have a question about. Students can then share out in small groups or whole class items from their list. This list can also be turned in as a formative assessment of their listening.
The thing I like best is that this protocol lends a voice to those students who do not feel comfortable “blurting” or do not process as quickly as other students. It is not a race to articulate your opinion. Rather, the focus is on thoughtful reflection. As a bonus, this can focus the small or whole group discussion on what they heard during a presentation or demonstration. This can be a great check for understanding and gives us the opportunity to clear up misunderstandings.
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| This is my "Protocol Badge" given to me by my Bismarck friends. Like I said, I get a lot of grief over my <3 of them. |
