(taken from Critical Issues for Civic Engagement in Higher Education, accessed at
http://www.mncampuscompact.org/vertical/Sites/%7BE34AF879-F177-472C-9EB0D811F247058B%7D/uploads/%7B64E45C8B-0F69-4BA6-AE00-22023625E1C0%7D.PDF
10/6/10.)
Reflecting at the Speed of Life
JoAnn Campbell
Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen; it is the most
important thing we have to learn in this life.
Etty Hillesum
I’m a former writing teacher, so reflection-- thinking about and processing experiences and
information to give meaning--strikes me as a natural element to any kind of education. However,
such thinking is not an inevitable part of experience, so we need to incorporate it into
community-based learning or research, contexts which provide a shared experience or text for a
class to analyze and discuss. The very nature of community-based learning requires
students to act in ways that may be new to them, in arenas that are strange and sometimes
uncomfortable, or within frameworks that may require them to make a paradigm shift. Such
contexts can also lead to insights about oneself and one’s beliefs, stereotypes, fears, emotional
responses, memories, anxieties, or blind spots if the experience can be articulated, shared, and
analyzed. In other words, by doing something often outside of our routine or comfort zone, we
get a chance to learn lessons that complement, deepen, and expand academic lessons
learned in a classroom through traditional means. Reflection helps students translate experience
into something from which they can learn. Otherwise, they may embody the T. S. Eliot quote—
“We had the experience but missed the meaning.” Let me illustrate. One semester when I taught
a service-learning class I volunteered at the local food bank, a warehouse that collected expired
and discarded food to redistribute to other food shelves and community kitchens. As I moved
pallets of canned goods and sorted donated bakery bread into categories of “usable” or “moldy,”
I saw the goods an organic food distributor had donated--packets of Earl Grey tea, beautiful
purple tins of grape seed oil, and cans of elaborate curry sauces. "I'd love some of that," I
thought. "I don't make THAT much money—how much would they miss one of those cans of
oil?"
These thoughts took me by surprise and gave me pause--was I really a thief at heart or was there
something else going on? I tend to see the world as filled with lessons (the byproduct of having
teachers for parents, I suppose) and therefore knew to look for another meaning in this anti-social
impulse. In one of my favorite books, Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy creates a
utopia where someone who steals is showered with gifts because clearly he or she is feeling a
lack. Maybe my desire for something I didn’t have could be filled in a healthier way. What had I
not been giving myself that I needed? One immediate answer that came to me was time. I'd been
so busy that I hadn't given myself the kind of leisurely, nurturing time that I need to feel sane and
whole. I had also been so busy I didn’t even know I had this need. Doing the slow, steady work
of counting cans and moving boxes at the food bank had created a space for me to feel that I was
missing something and figure out what it was. The next day in class I told that story, including
my own chagrin about wanting to steal and the realization that what I really needed
was time for myself. The importance and usefulness of that insight convinced me what a rich
learning environment such work typically labeled “mundane” can provide if we are open to it
and willing to look at ourselves. I want my students to see the world metaphorically
and to find a lesson in every situation; reflection makes that possible.
What’s so scary about reflection?
The act of reflection has the potential to crack open neat, prior categories for people, which may
explain some people’s hesitation to lead reflection sessions because the results are very
unpredictable. I’ve certainly made inadequate responses or failed to ask a key follow-up
question when faced with a student’s strong and sometimes emotional reaction to a servicelearning experience. Yet I’m coming to see that facilitating effective reflection is less about my
ability to ask the perfect question than it is about my ability to receive the students’ experiences,
questions, and frustrations, and to create a space where students learn something by re-visioning
those experiences. The more I read, learn, and think about reflection, the more central the act of
listening seems to be.
Listen and Listen Again
In “Tell Me More, On the Fine Art of Listening,” Brenda Ueland writes that listening is so
powerful it “creates us.” Ueland’s claim is that when one is listened to “ideas actually begin to
grow within us and come to life” (i). She uses the metaphor of a fountain that flows in each one
of us to describe the effect listening has on a person. These fountains of creativity and
authenticity can get clogged with debris, and what unclogs the fountain and allows its waters to
run pure is creative, non-critical listening. The initial unclogging of the fountain means some of
that debris has to come out before the pure, creative, and authentic gems come forth. Ueland
relates this phenomenon to writing: “Pour out the dull things on paper too—you can tear them up
afterward—for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are
certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively. So it is with people who have
not been listened to in the right way—with affection and a kind of jolly excitement. Their
creative fountain has been blocked. Only superficial talk comes out— what is prissy or gushing
or merely nervous. No one has called out of them, by wonderful listening, that which is true and
alive” (ii). How do we listen with “affection” and “jolly excitement” in the academy where we
are paid to evaluate or judge students through a particular disciplinary lens? I think the
requirement of grading students can be skirted in certain contexts, classroom activities, or
even assignments. For instance, in his book Hidden Wholeness Parker Palmer shares how to
create a “circle of trust” in which the whole person is encouraged to come forth. Palmer writes
that the point of a circle of trust is "not to persuade anyone of anything or to
reach consensus on how things really are but to help each person listen to his or her inner
teacher".
If we don’t allow students’ and our own inner teachers to come forth in service-learning settings,
we may be missing an opportunity. In “The Irony of Service,” Keith Morton establishes a
typology of different paradigms for service and claims that it is not up to us to change or
transport students from one paradigm to another, despite the fact that education seems to be
about changing students into something else—lifelong learners, active citizens, productive
workers, critical thinkers, etc. Rather, Keith argues that each paradigm can be done well or not.
If we create a circle of trust where a student can truly explore her responses and construct her
own meaning, we have opened the opportunity for her to be an effective change agent in the
world--and to make the changes that emerge for her and seem crucial to fulfill who she is today.
I've come to believe that trying to change anyone is a form of violence that stems from my own
fear and need to control. Palmer defines violence as "any way we have of violating the identity
and integrity of another person" (169). That is, until we accept, embrace, and enjoy students
exactly where they are, there is little chance that a semester's experience, however intense and
well-planned, will transform them into more caring, thoughtful, civically engaged people. We
may have had students who had the sought-after "aha” moment, seen the world through different
lenses, or whose lives have shifted dramatically after a service-learning course. In order to be
willing to let go and make an attitudinal or behavioral shift, I would bet those students felt
accepted and cared for when they started that experience rather than judged and seen as deficient.
Preparing to Facilitate
I must also apply that kind of acceptance to myself if I am to be an effective facilitator. Here are
a few ways I remind myself that I’m perfectly capable of helping others think deeply about what
they have experienced.
Slow down— Margaret Wheatley says that the most radical thing a leader in the 21st century can
do is slow down. Deep reflection requires the time and space for students to articulate what they
haven’t thought or felt before. The facilitator’s job is to create that space, what Wheatley calls a
“front porch,” in which to share ideas. This can look very different from a rushed, syllabusdriven semester.
Visit the sites of the students’ service experiences—know the students’ text. This should be
obvious, but I suspect not all of us have been to each site at its busiest or most chaotic times and
viscerally experienced what our students have. I find it easier to respond more authentically and
ask genuine questions based on my experience rather than on something I read in a mission
statement or an abstract concept of how things operate.
Write with the students and share your responses. Something shifts in a room of writing
students when I’m writing too—there’s urgency or energy that signals this is an important
activity. At some point in every semester, reflective writing should be done in class or at the
community site—to indicate how important it is, certainly—but also because there’s an increased
energy when writing with others, much as there is when meditating with others.
Ask honest questions. Years ago a friend from graduate school told me about serving on a
dissertation defense at her first academic job. She tried really hard to ask questions that would
impress her new colleagues, but soon she found herself immersed in the topic and
asked questions she wanted to know. “Then I really did impress them,” she observed. Students
know when a question is leading and when it’s open to whatever their answer may be. Also, the
more I focus on my performance—do I appear smart? insightful? wise?—the less likely I am to
hear fully what the person is saying and ask a useful question.
Welcome intimacy into the reflective space. Reflection is a chance for the student to listen,
perhaps for a first time, to the inner teacher Palmer writes about, the only one who truly knows
what is needed for the next step in the individual's growth and development. For many learners,
starting with the self is the entry point to interest in and understanding of more theoretical
subjects. If it’s not ok for an integrated or whole self to participate in a reflection session, then
many will not learn all they can from the conversation.
Find a colleague or community with whom you can reflect on your own experience in this
field. I sometimes forget that relationships lie at the heart of effective community-based
education; indeed, that’s what drew me to and keeps me in this field. We’re often so busy doing
the work, handling the logistics, obtaining funding, and supporting students and faculty that we
don’t take time to think about the larger issues we hope to address, the impact this has on our
lives, or the parts of our lives that aren’t included in the work. We all need a community of
supportive, non-judgmental listeners with whom we can try out ideas and create knowledge.
Works Cited
Hillesum, Etty. An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork.
NY: Henry Holt, 1996.
Morton, Keith. “The Irony of Service: Charity, Project and Social
Change in Service Learning,” Michigan Journal of
Community Service Learning, 2 (Fall 1995): 19-32.
Palmer, Parker. A Hidden Wholeness: The Journal Toward an
Undivided Life. SF: Jossey-Bass, 2004.
Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time. NY: Knopf, 1976.
Ueland, Brenda. “Tell Me More, On the Fine Art of Listening.” Utne
Reader, (November/December) 1992.
Wheatley, Margaret. Keynote address, “The Work of the Servant
Leader,” Robert K. Greenleaf Center Conference,
Indianapolis, Indiana, June, 1999.