Thus far, I have introduced the historical context of the talking stick, highlighting the transition from talking to listening. I illustrated the significance of dual awareness (listening and speaking as 2LS) through Covey’s habits of highly successful people, an Aikido technique, and musical jamming. In the upcoming sections, I introduce and describe the preparation and procedures for facilitating the listening stick activity as part of the Listening to the SONG of Life course.

I introduce the listening stick activity in the Listening to the SONG of Life course to facilitate a deeper, more heart-focused experience of listening to self (when one is holding the listening stick) and listening to others’ feelings and needs (when others hold the listening stick). The heart-focused emphasis is based on Marshall Rosenberg’s philosophy to make life more wonderful through empathic listening as part of the nonviolent communication process.^[1]

Preparing for the Listening Stick Activity

Before introducing the listening stick activity to students in class, I suggest crafting and practicing using the listening stick.^[2] Alternatively, any meaningful physical object can serve as a listening stick, such as a feather, stone, shell, candle, or even a colored marker will do in a pinch.^[3]

Introducing the Listening Stick Activity

The listening stick can be introduced at the beginning of class as an icebreaker or sometime later in the course after student introductions. I recommend the latter as the listening stick activity deepens existing relationships, providing a greater sense of cohesiveness. Before providing instructions on the practice of the listening stick activity in class, I narrate two short stories about my relationship with trees and how I crafted the first listening sticks for the course.

Gift of Trees

I love trees. When tall enough to pull myself onto the trunk of an almond tree, I climbed to my favorite spot between three branches and sat in awe, overlooking the landscape of walnut, grapefruit, and pomegranate trees in the family backyard in Sunnyvale, California. Now, dwelling on a half-acre in Chesapeake, Virginia, I listen to the trees tell me about the cycle of life, smelling the almond blossoms in spring, sitting beneath the branches of the magnolia in the heat of summer, enjoying the succulent brown figs in late August, watching maple leaves cascade in the cool of fall, and contemplating the naked branches of a pecan in the stillness of winter. Trees bring me happiness and peace.

Trees can also teach lessons when we listen attentively.^[4] Trees are rooted in the earth as we are rooted in our ancestors. Their branches reach for the sun as we reach for our goals. Trees often stand together in a grove as we stand together in community. Trees gift us with their very substance in the form of wood that, with some imagination and artistry, can become a listening stick for cultivating and fortifying our personal relationships.

In surveying our property, I spied some branches that fell after a northeastern storm. I gathered and trimmed cedar, birch, maple, and pine branches to one-foot lengths, then lightly sanded and oiled to accent the grain. These crafted sticks are the centerpiece of a listening stick activity that enhances our ability to listen to ourselves and each other.

Choosing a Listening Stick

It is important not to become too fixated on finding and crafting the perfect listening stick and lose sight of its purpose. Recall that any meaningful object, such as a special pen, feather, or candle, can serve as a listening stick. We imbue the listening stick with meaning and power.

Preview of the Listening Stick Activity

Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island use talking sticks in tribal council, but I will call them listening sticks and use them in small groups in the classroom. The person holding the stick is the one who talks while others listen. In Lindahl’s listening stick version of the traditional talking stick activity,^[5] the person with the stick speaks, but with a special listening focus. Before speaking, the speaker listens inwardly for an intuitive response to a question, and after their speaking turn, they listen again to create a question for the next speaker. To illustrate further, I chronologically outline the steps of the listening stick activity.

Tips and Debriefing for the Listening Stick Activity

After completing the listening stick activity, I invite students to reflect on their experience, record something they learned in their journal, and share one of their learnings in their small group. Alternatively, one can encourage students to consider a series of questions to guide their reflection.^[12] Some students are eager to comment, question, and share their experiences with each other in the group. Other students seem influenced by the nature of the listening activity and are more receptive and reflective in their communication with group members.

After about fifteen minutes of in-group sharing, I ask each group to choose one learning from their group to share with the class. As a class, we listen to the most important learning from each group, pausing between groups for reflection, questions, and discussion. Unless a question is directed to me, I maintain the role of facilitator for these inter-group discussions.

Lastly, we bring together the threads of the class discussion by summarizing what we have collectively learned. As students give voice to what they have learned, I record keywords and symbols on the whiteboard. Together, we create an acronym for the words and symbols to represent and assist us in recalling our communal learnings.

This concludes the debriefing part of the listening activity. In the next section, I describe some of the learning themes from past class discussions. And where appropriate, I provide further guidance for using the listening stick activity in the classroom.

Learning Themes from the Listening Stick Activity

Comfort and Freedom to Speak

Many students cannot recall a time in their recent past when another person listened to them without interruption, comment, or questioning. Students find comfort and freedom in knowing they can speak as long as needed without interruption.^[13] Many daily interactions in our digital-techno-oriented culture are brief (e.g., texting, Twitter tweets, Tinder swipes, and Facebook likes), and carving out extended in-person face-to-face time with another is often a challenge. The listening stick activity demonstrates that it is possible to counterbalance brief and often superficial interactions with more thoughtful and potentially deeper ones.

Improved Equality Through Restriction and Expansion

In addition to the sense of comfort and freedom that the extended interaction time affords, the structure of the listening stick activity serves as an equalizer for group interaction. Normally, dominant speakers in the group are now asked to reflect and listen, speaking only when holding the listening stick. At first, dominant speakers find this restrictive structure frustrating, but most of them begin to see the benefits of listening silently to others as the process unfolds. In contrast, normally reticent students now have a designated time to speak freely without fear of being interrupted. Reticent students enjoy an expanded sense of power in knowing they are guaranteed time to speak and do not need to compete or interrupt someone to obtain a speaking turn. In their journal writings, students report that implementing the listening stick activity in their daily lives creates more equality between interaction partners and small group members.^[14]

Discernment in Listening

Another issue that students frequently struggle with in the self-listening part of the listening stick activity is how to discern between competing thoughts and ideas. Several answers (or questions) will often emerge during the thirty seconds of reflection. How does one discern which response to share with the group? There are two simple ways to discern what to share. First, one can use the previously mentioned method of choosing the last answer (or question) of the reflection period to share with the group. Another way to discern is to recognize that most answers are choices between several goods. There may not be one best answer, but several good answers may exist. Any one of the “good answers” is worthy of sharing with the group. A third, more labor-intensive method of discernment requires further time to ask and respond to three questions: Is what I want to share with the group true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?^[15] I suggest that students consider these three questions when a serious issue confronts their group and to allot more time to discern.

Quality of Listening

Students also notice a difference in the quality of their other-oriented listening. Typically, when a small group in class is assigned a question to answer, group members begin formulating answers to the question while feigning listening to other group members who are speaking. Their attention is divided. They cannot formulate an answer and listen wholeheartedly at the same time. To counter this division of attention, the listening stick activity unifies attention by focusing solely on listening to the person holding the listening stick. This is possible since answering the question changes with each speaker’s turn. Individuals do not know what question they will be asked to answer until they are passed the listening stick. Untethered from rehearsing their answer to a standard question for the entire group, members of the group are free to give their undivided attention to the speaker.

Heart-Felt Listening

Many students find it challenging to cultivate the practice of gifting others with undivided listening attention without the aid of a listening stick. Without the physical object of the listening stick as a reminder, it is easy to listen primarily with the head, that is, to listen for content (e.g., what’s the problem and how to we solve it). We might also find ourselves busy formulating a brilliant response to impress others and inflate our egos. I remind students that the listening stick symbolizes an inner attitude of the heart. They can cultivate this inner heart-felt listening in virtually any communication context or function.^[16] We talk about ways to remind ourselves to “listen with the heart” in the spirit of the Buddhist practice of gathas.^[17] By way of illustration, students and I co-created the following Gatha-like practices. When turning on a light switch, we can silently say, “I will turn on my heart to listen with attention and devotion.” When we see a tree, we can think of the branches from which the listening stick is crafted. When we feel the urge to interrupt our communication partner or group member, we can acknowledge the urge and consciously choose to give more attention to the other person. Other student ideas for creatively remembering to listen from the heart are drawing a small red-colored heart on the back of one’s hand with a washable colored marker, wearing a heart-shaped necklace or wristband, and carrying a heart-shaped stone in one’s pocket.

Applying the Listening Stick Outside the Classroom

Students may discover that the extended response time in the listening stick activity can add a creative dimension to their self-listening. For some, their initial response to a question morphs during the thirty-second reflection period into something unanticipated, sometimes something richer, deeper, and more profound than their initial response to the question.

We could not determine how to apply the idea of listening with extended time to in-person public face-to-face interactions between strangers and acquaintances where long pauses like this would be considered a negative violation of social expectations. More than three seconds of silence between speaker turns is often considered an undesirable time lapse in many educational and business contexts in the U.S.^[18] Recent research suggests that the interpretation of gaps in the conversation (two seconds or more) may vary depending on the nature of the relationship. Specifically, silence signals disconnection among strangers, whereas silence between friends increases connection.^[19] Thus, the listening stick activity should apply better to close personal relationships than with strangers. For instance, in the context of friendship, one can explain the intention of the listening stick activity and frame the pregnant pauses during the listening stick activity as a birthplace for creative ideas. When practiced regularly, the habit of listening from the heart can expand to other personal relationships at school, work, and home.

Cohesiveness, Communal Truth, and Intimacy

The nonverbal passing of the listening stick from one person to the next in the group, each with a new question to answer and a new question to pose, provides students with a feeling of group cohesiveness. This feeling of closeness is frequently described by students as being part of something larger than themselves. Perhaps the listening stick activity allows students to experience a collective search for a communal truth^[20] that no single individual could create independently. A similar feeling of group cohesiveness is reported by Richard Hyde^[21] after students complete a one-hour talking stick activity in small group councils. Finally, in their journal writings for the listening class, a few students report successfully applying the listening stick activity in their close personal relationships, resulting in greater intimacy with their partners.

Assessing the Listening Stick Activity

I do not formally assess students’ experiences of the listening stick activity as part of the course grade. In my philosophy of teaching, the sense of being evaluated while one is learning a new skill is antithetical to the purpose of learning. Externally motivated learning for a good grade often decreases learning because the learner is focused on the shortest route to the highest grade and not on the process of learning. Whereas learning based on intrinsic motivation (like curiosity or self-improvement) can enhance the learning process.^[22]

For me, as a professor, assessing student learning with traditional standardized tests (like multiple-choice tests) is also antithetical to the process of learning.^[23] There are many alternatives to standardized assessments of student learning, such as portfolios, presentations, written and video blogs, stories, poems, artwork, comic strips, plays, music, journals, puppetry, and games.^[24]

To assess the listening stick activity, I encourage students to write about what they learned in their listening journal and include something about the listening stick activity in their end-of-semester learning poem. Journals and poems count as part of the course grade and are assessed at mid- and end-of-term, along with student conferences during which we discuss what they have learned.

If an instructor needs an immediate evaluation of the listening stick activity,^[25] I recommend some form of self-assessment. For example, after the listening activity, and after students are provided time to apply the activity outside of class, students can write about what they learned and assign themselves a letter grade based on a rubric that the instructor creates, such as “quantity and quality” of writing, or “effort and insight” of writing. Alternatively, students can, individually or as a class, create their own rubric for grading, and the instructor can approve or recommend revisions. I find these alternative assessments more compatible with the ideals of teaching and learning about listening to the SONG of life in the classroom.