Читать книгу Listen Wise - Monica Brady-Myerov - Страница 7

We can hear before we are born, but listening can take decades to develop, practice, and perfect. It took me 20 years to become an expert listener. A professional listener. And I learned that listening is a gift we can share with others.

My passion for listening began when I got my first tape recorder for Christmas (Figure 1.1). Santa delivered my Christmas wish—a bright red Panasonic cassette tape recorder. This was the 1970s, so it was shiny and rounded on the edges. It had an easy carry handle that slid up, which told me audio was meant to be portable. It had a cheap plug-in microphone, which told me I should be listening to and recording others. And it ran on batteries so I could go anywhere I wanted to capture sound. It's really one of the only gifts I remember getting as a child. I instantly fell in love with recording sound.

Figure 1.1 My first tape recorder.

Source: Monica Brady-Myerov's family photo.

My recording didn't go far beyond my family. I mostly cornered my sisters and interviewed them. I conducted a hard-hitting investigative interview with my two-year-old sister about the neighbor's dog. I thought I was a reporter. I wanted to be the 60 Minutes leading female journalist of the time, Barbara Walters. I would also secretly place the recorder under the dining room table to capture the “adult” conversation. Even at that age, I knew listening was a way to learn something new—maybe even something adults wouldn't tell me. I only have one remaining cassette tape from this time, which I've now preserved digitally.

My love of sound and journalism started to come together a few years after I got that tape recorder for Christmas. Our family would take long drives in the summer to visit relatives in Massachusetts. It took 14 hours to drive from Kentucky to Massachusetts. Being in a car with five kids was tedious for everyone, especially my dad, who was always the driver.

My father loved news and would always play CBS news at the top of the hour on the radio. But there were very few all-news stations at that time. And there was bad reception when you were driving through the mountains of West Virginia. That means there were long stretches in between the top of the hour news bulletins and he wanted to hear more news. So he brought along his newspapers. As a daily subscriber to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, there was plenty of news to read. But how to hear it?

My father saw a creative solution. He told his kids that anyone who wanted to read the newspaper to him while he drove got to sit in the front seat between him and my mother. This was back when the front seat was a bench that could fit three people. Today it seems dangerous.

I saw my opportunity to escape the chaos in the back seat with my three sisters and one brother. I was the second oldest, and the only volunteer. My older sister was a bookworm and preferred reading silently to block out the noise.

I sat unbelted in between my mom and dad in the front of our station wagon and read the newspaper out loud. My dad would glance over from the road and poke his finger at the next story he wanted me to read to him. I learned how to follow a jump in a newspaper story and read with some interest and emotion. Looking back on this experience with the knowledge I now have of how hearing words and content strengthen reading and learning, I am sure these experiences had a huge impact on my learning. I know they influenced my career choice. I wanted to be an audio journalist.

But I also learned that at any age, reading to someone is a gift of sharing, love, and intimacy. Hearing another human's voice, expressing words in their own unique way makes you feel closer. You could be a kindergarten teacher sharing a picture book at circle time or a middle school teacher sharing Harry Potter chapter by chapter. Do not underestimate the impact of your voice on your students and their ability to listen.