Now we begin a two-part mini-series on how to improve listening.  This week we are going to examine "Proactive Strategies" for improving listening. 

A proactive strategy is a move that you make before the poor listening even happens.  Just like getting a flu shot or taking your car in for an oil change, it is an effort to stop the problem before it even starts.

Drawing from his many years of experience, p4cHI founder Dr. Thomas Jackson (Dr. J) shares some of his most memorable moments and significant realizations.  These stories provide us with a vibrant and oftentimes inspirational perspective on where p4cHI has come from, what it is, and, indeed, on what it could be.

In this week's story Dr. J talks about the stages of development of the p4cHI community of inquiry.  

Wonder: We wonder about the world and wonder at it.  "Wonder," Francis Bacon said long ago, "is the seed of knowledge."  It is what inspires us to ask questions, explore the stars, and discover better ways to live.  It is what takes our breath away and inspires us to rise to unimagined heights.  Wonder is indeed the seed from which much grows.

It was an hour before The Big Meeting and I frantically approached my co-worker.  "OK, I said, "what's our plan?  What's our strategy?  What are we going to say and what our we going to do?"

My co-worker was a bit older, a bit wiser, and certainly at that moment a lot calmer than I.  She looked at me with an amused look on her face, paused several seconds, and then leaned towards me.  "This," she said in a quiet voice, "is what we're going to do.  We are going to listen to them.  We are going to listen to them very carefully.  And then once we're done listening we will know what to do."

We have a lot of "Magic Words" in p4cHI.  Most of the Magic Words are acronyms.  POPAAT, for instance, stands for Please One Person At A Time.  NQP is short for Next Question Please.  

SPLAT is the oddball; it isn't short for anything.  It just means that you need to speak louder because the words came too quietly and softly our of your mouth and, so, fell with a "splat" on the floor before they could be heard.  At least that's what I tell the kids.  In truth, legend has it, the origin of the term is a bit more grim.  Imagine, a class was once told, that your friend off in the distance is about to get run over by a bus.  You need to speak with a loud voice or the bus is going to hit your friend and he/she will go SPLAT.  (That story is just between you and me.  It is not recommended that you use it with young children!)

One thing, in all honesty, that I'm not as good at as I might be is explaining how p4cHI fits in with various National and State educational initiatives.  My first instinct is usually to try to make the broader (and not always well-received) case that schools ought to aim higher than simply helping children to meet academic standards.  Ultimately, I am more concerned with empowering children to live the good life.

From the fact that I don't spend a lot of time trying to explain how p4cHI fits in with current educational policy it doesn't follow, however, that p4cHI doesn't fit in with such policy.  Quite to the contrary, p4cHI provides a dynamic way to achieve many highly esteemed educational aims.

Drawing from his many years of experience, p4cHI founder Dr. Thomas Jackson (Dr. J) shares some of his most memorable moments and significant realizations.  These stories provide us with a vibrant and oftentimes inspirational perspective on where p4cHI has come from, what it is, and, indeed, on what it could be.

Did anything come before space?  In this week's story Dr. J tells what happens when a class of Kindergarten students explore the connection between space, dinosaurs, and God.

To "scratch beneath the surface" of an inquiry topic is to go deeper.  It is to make progress.  It is to arrive at a tentative answer to the inquiry question or, as is more oftentimes the case, to see new connections or even to feel the puzzlement that comes with a deeper understanding of the complexity of the topic.  This week our group will demonstrate strategies that will help you to scratch beneath the surface and guide the community towards intellectual progress.

The "T" in this kit stands for "Is it true?"  Sometimes everyone thinks something is true.  It is, they say, common knowledge.  But is this belief really true?  How do we know that it is true?  And how can we be sure that it is true?

Sometimes, as we get older, we stop wondering and stop asking questions like these.  This can be a mistake.  Sometimes we can be a little too sure of our beliefs and, as a consequence, head down the wrong track.  "T" is a sort of cognitive dynamite.  We use it to blow up the roadblock of over-confident certainty and, by so doing, provide ourselves with the opportunity to verify that our beliefs and subsequent choices are, indeed, leading us down the right track.

"A" stands for Assumption.  Usually we think of an assumption as a bad belief or a belief that does not have enough support.  But, as I see it, an assumption is a flag of warning that we raise in order to indicate that a belief may not be accurate.

My explanation of Assumption is, to be sure, different.  I don't know if anyone else in p4cHI would explain this tool in the way that I'm going to explain it.  Have I got it right?  You can listen and be the judge of that.  Ultimately, I think what's most important isn't whether or not I've got everything right.  It is whether or not my ideas are useful or thought-provoking.