Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 19, No. 1 (2022)
Transformative Listening: Making Lived Experiences Visible
Rachel Stark
Oklahoma State University
rachel.m.stark@okstate.edu
Kennedy Essmiller
Oklahoma State University
kennewe@ostatemail.okstate.edu
The purpose of this column is to explicate how the call for proposals for the 2020 South Central Writing Center Association (SCWCA) Conference impacted our enactment of transformative listening as graduate students in the Oklahoma State University (OSU) English department. We were specifically intrigued by the call for proposals for the 2020 SCWCA Conference because of our university’s history as one institution of many settled on land belonging to indigenous communities. Despite the fact that this conference was one of many affected by the COVID19 Pandemic and therefore did not take place as intended, we were still challenged by this call, as well as the call for papers for this special issue of Praxis challenging scholars to acknowledge how our history continues to influence our present. Due to this history, it can be particularly challenging to build community while also avoiding the friction that can come from this in a predominantly white space such as the OSU Writing Center. Transformative listening—as detailed by Romeo García in the call for proposals to establish a "mindfulness of difference”—is a necessary action the OSU Writing Center as well as others with similar histories must take. In the following pages, we describe what transformative listening is and can look like within the writing center space as well as specific examples of how students and scholars alike can utilize it to make their practice more effective.
Writing centers are places where people come together to co-create. This requires a space that encourages and nurtures writers from all sorts of different backgrounds. It is a place where consultants can and should strive to advocate for student voices, as Romeo García says (García32). As advocates for student voices across a wide variety of backgrounds, writing centers and their consultants can work together to aid in “providing pathways so that students can negotiate the academy successfully” (32-33). García points out that listening can work as a “form of actional and decolonial work” (33). This transformative listening is described by García as listening “to the world, well and deeply” (52). It is necessary to understand how this listening can be used to recognize our history and how it impacts our present.
One community of historically marginalized voices we often see in the writing center are multilingual writers. There is a “potential for writing centers to be transformative for teaching and learning when curious, open-minded, empathetic peer tutors invite multilingual writers to negotiate and co-construct meaning” (Blazer and Fallon). Sarah Blazer and Brian Fallon’s work on multilingual justice and writing centers also point out how collaboration and co-creation through this type of open-minded and empathetic listening and learning allows people to help each other succeed in their interactions (Blazer and Fallon). While Blazer and Fallon are specifically speaking into the experience of multilingual writers, the importance of maintaining and encouraging cultural identities as well as utilizing open-minded and empathetic listening and learning extends to a variety of lived experiences ranging from sexuality to gender to race, among others. Essentially, writing centers exist in spaces wherein transformative listening can be used to combat the historical silencing of marginalized voices.
Romeo García discusses the importance of embracing and encouraging the role of the writing center in making the lived experience of race visible in his piece “Unmaking Gringo-Centers.” García, who is an Assistant Professor in Writing and Rhetoric Studies at the University Utah emphasizes the importance of listening, again calling attention to the need to listen “to the world, well and deeply” (García 52). Therefore, we have provided some examples in our writing center practices where we transferred and applied this understanding. All of this, the OSU Writing Center does through the framework of employing an ethics of care, as guided by our writing center director Anna Sicari.
What can transformative listening look like, and how can we listen in such a way that lends itself to transformation and change? There are two primary forms of listening that we focus on as seen within our writing center--empathetic listening and authentic listening. These types of listening can and should be used by our consultants to engage in transformative listening and thereby co-creating a mindfulness of difference within our writing center spaces.
One type of listening we find in the writing center is a more empathetic listening. Empathy, as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is a beneficial form of listening that can ultimately lend itself to transformative listening. This listening tends to have the ability to open people up as they realize that they are being listened to. This allows for a space of acceptance and encourages people to feel comfortable making their identity visible and speak without the fear of judgment. Writers are thus enabled to share their own concerns and experiences, inviting the listener to respond. In the writing center, this type of listening encourages the consultant (the listener) to open a dialogue with the writer (the speaker) about their lived experiences. This can lead to building relationships between the consultant and the writer, laying the groundwork for the co-creation of a space mindful of difference, bringing in the variety of backgrounds--from different races to different disciplines--to form an environment that is able to effect change. However, understanding and sharing the feelings of others--especially marginalized members of our communities--cannot enact change by itself alone. It is simply one step in the right direction.
Authentic listening is another form we find in our interactions with writers. While empathetic listening serves to open a dialogue, authentic listening serves to confirm the writer and their experiences. This listening tends to involve confirmation of what the writer has to say, which might present itself as verbal cues such as words of reassurance as well as nonverbal cues such as head nodding. For example, if a multilingual writer comes into the writing center with comments from their professor telling them that their English is not up to their standards, authentic listening can provide these writers with a space to feel reassured and have the importance of their voice confirmed. This type of listening leaves the writer and consultant with feelings of understanding. This confirmation allows writers to feel comfortable representing their identities in the writing center space. Thus, in the case of the multilingual writer, they would feel empowered to include their own voice and represent their own experiences in the writing center. Here again, we find García's specific call for "mindfulness of difference" to be particularly important. Because we are not always able to fully understand the experiences of the different writers with whom we work, we must understand the importance of learning with difference. Ultimately, as with empathetic listening, authentic listening can be a step in the right direction towards transformative change in the writing center spaces, allowing for the voices and lived experiences of marginalized members to be heard and made visible.
True transformative listening requires action—action on both the scale of the individual writing center consultants as well as on the larger scale of the institution as a whole. That action might look different depending on the type of listening employed as well as the lived experiences being made visible, both by the writer and the consultant. For example, because empathetic listening serves to open a dialogue, actions that can follow that might include something as seemingly small as a critical conversation about how the consultant might better serve the writer in light of their experiences, or it can even open the door to a larger conversation within the writing center, leading to a semester focused on how the writing center can serve a particular marginalized community. Transformative listening can lead to the implementation of various practices such as antiracist pedagogy as well as services that serve the LGBTQIA+ community like our own Oklahoma State University Safe Zone training. These are often the result of these dialogues opening up because of empathetic listening. On the scale of individual consultants, we are often inspired by empathetic listening to engage in these trainings as well as encourage others to do so.
Authentic listening can lead to actions such as the building of a community within the writing center. For example, in our Oklahoma State University Writing Center, the act of authentic listening can result in the creation of an inquiry group consisting of writing center consultants who come together to discuss their own lived experiences such as a group dedicated to graduate students specifically or LGBTQIA+ people and allies. These different forms of listening can provide the “opportunity to learn from the encounters and interactions that take place in our writing centers” (García 40). As consultants and as writing centers as a whole, we have the obligation to learn from our lived experiences and the lived experiences of those with whom we engage. Not only will these lessons improve us as consultants and instructors, but they will also better us as members of our communities.
Transformative listening requires making lived experiences visible both on the writer’s side as well as the consultant’s. Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison discusses in the chapter “Being Seen and Not Seen: A Black Female Body in the Writing Center” her own experiences as a black woman in a predominantly white space, both at her university and within the writing center where she worked. Haltiwanger Morrison comments on how she either felt ignored or singled out because of her lived experiences as a black woman. She says that because of the insistence of those around her declaring they did not see race, she felt they did not see her (Haltiwanger Morrison 21). On the other hand, she also describes feeling called out by her instructor in the classroom specifically because of her race (23). After responding when she was called out, her peers determined that she had not “spoken ‘authentically’ as a Black person nor shared an appropriate Black response” (23). Not only did these experiences affect her in the classroom, they reached into her experiences as a consultant in her writing center as well.
As a consultant, Haltiwanger Morrison had a session in which a client was “looking to make money from exploiting Black women’s struggles to care for [their] hair—to make money” (25). She describes feeling a physical reaction to the way he could “sit beside [her] and discuss it so objectively, analytically” (25). In this instance, Haltiwanger Morrison found that this student was not reciprocating the types of listening we outline above in which consultants and writers both make their lived experiences visible in efforts to facilitate dialogue and effect change. Haltiwanger Morrison questions “But what of the tutors? Where was the line between [her] obligation to the student and [her] own personal safety?” (26). Therefore, it is necessary that writing centers do not sacrifice their consultants for the sake of the writers. In fact, we argue that the safety of our consultants as well as our writers are required for true transformative listening and making lived experiences visible. Again, actions are required for true transformative listening. Specifically, there is an issue within the writing center spaces of people listening passively instead of authentically. True transformative listening requires actions such as the revision of policies to protect consultants and writers alike who experience things like racism and sexism.
In terms of making our own lived experiences visible, we have outlined here a few of the different ways it has impacted our work. Working as women in our writing center, we have found that female-identifying writers feel more comfortable booking sessions with female-identifying consultants. We find that as writers ourselves we feel more comfortable engaging in sessions with female-identifying consultants. As consultants, we have experienced male-identifying writers who have either chosen a male-identifying consultant over us or who have not respected our authority on the subject of writing. We have each had experiences with male-identifying writers who have either ignored our suggestions or pushed back against what we had to say in a session. A male-identifying writer might come in and, when presented with the option of either a male-identifying consultant or a female-identifying consultant, prefer the male-identifying consultant because of his assumed authority. By making our lived experiences as women visible, we can make other female-identifying writers comfortable contributing to the writing center space. Through these experiences, we can identify ways in which our writing center space can be improved.
However, identifying ways in which our writing center space can be improved is only the first step in a series of steps needed to effectively recognize and incorporate the lived experiences of others. It is necessary to listen “well and deeply” as García said to create a writing center space in which all lived experiences can be made visible (García 52). We agree that as consultants in university writing centers, it is our responsibility to partner with our writers and their instructors to best equip students with the tools they need to succeed within the academy. Because universities, and by extension writing centers, are rooted in historical racist/sexist/Western practices, there is a “tendency to reduce or retrofit students of color” as well as students belonging to other marginalized communities (32-33). This past continues to make its mark on our present. Therefore, it is our responsibility to initiate this change through transformative listening and making lived experiences visible, thus taking the first step to emphasize the voices who have been systematically silenced.
Works Cited
Blazer, Sarah, and Brian Fallon. “Changing Conditions for Multilingual Writers: Writing Centers Destabilizing Standard Language Ideology.” Composition Forum, 2020, https://doi.org/https://compositionforum.com/issue/44/changing-conditions.php.
Esters, Jason B. “On the Edges: Black Maleness, Degrees of Racism, and Community on the Boundaries of the Writing Center.” Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change, Edited by Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan, Utah State University Press, 2011, pp. 290-299.
García, Romeo. “Unmaking Gringo-Centers.” The Writing Center Journal 36.1, 2017, pp. 29-60.
Haltiwanger Morrison, Talisha. “Being Seen and Not Seen: A Black Female Body in the Writing Center.” Out in the Center: Public Controversies and Private Struggles, by Harry C. Denny et al., Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 21–27.