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Talking About Listening: Urban Teacher Responses To Empathetic Listening Training, Jennifer Borek

Essays in Education

Teachers in urban school districts need to learn better listening skills. The high-stakes world of parental involvement, especially with parents who have not had good school experiences themselves, necessitates that faculty and administration be able to listen with clarity and calm. Emergency-licensed teacher education students at a major urban institution of higher education were trained in empathetic listening, practiced these skills, and then were asked to use these skills in the field. While most believed they did not need the skill when they first heard of it, all discovered its complexity and utility during the course of the semester.