BLOG #1 Why should I listen?

My job at Boise State University permits me to practice public advocacy by assisting students who are farmworkers to complete their freshman year and continue on to graduate and become the first member of their family to do so. Learning how to communicate effectively by looking through the lens of various communication theories is beneficial to accomplish this task, accompanied by commitment and responsibility towards them to listen. The biggest struggle for these students is to hear them as they discuss the barriers that stand in their way of succeeding. Their family members and most of their community have never attended college, so they need to be heard by someone. Listening to these students with authenticity and engaging with them allows us to accomplish the goal of forming a partnership to influence change. Forming this partnership is the key to their success.

Paulo Freire posed this approach in three ways; problem posing approach, reflexivity, and praxis. The problem posing approach will ask us to look at our audience with respect because they already having their own knowledge about their goals, values, they will form their own meanings and we are allies. Secondly, reflexivity is the process of the interaction between the speaker and the audience growing together while engaging with each other to produce a thoughtful affect. Lastly the praxis is formed when reflection and action on the world is used in order to transform it. This cultivated pattern is the key to public advocacy because the process takes time and trust to see something in a different way. (Warren & Fassett p. 44-47)

Warren & Fassett defines compassionate critical listening as an important process of finding your audience’s complicated personal meaning in their words to avoid misunderstandings. For the most part, farmworkers in Idaho are Latinos and segregate themselves because they fear others who haven’t experienced poverty and have judged them or mistreated them based on the color of their skin. My view differs from theirs because I never experienced discrimination until I moved to Idaho, five years ago. Seeing their point of view is an act of compassionate that is sometimes difficult and uncomfortable because they are afraid to change that view of avoiding what they perceive as a foe or oppressor. I advocate change by encouraging them to interact with their university community and not consider differences but to embrace them as part of learning and growing. (Warren & Fassett p. 51-52)

Advocating change begins with listening in a genuine way that demands for us to pay attention on what we say while respectfully searching for someone else’s meaning. The only way this audience or Latino farmworkers listen to me is by feeling like they are heard. Knowing that they view diversity is an impossibility and sharing my experience of possibilities has formed a partnership that allows me the ability to explain the importance of a multicultural community and advocating change to embrace it and not fear it. (Warren & Fassett p. 51-52)

References

LiteracyDotOrg. (2009, December 30). Paulo Freire - An Incredible Conversation  [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFWjnkFypFA

Warren, J. & Fassett, D. (2015). Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Davidproject. (2012, August 29). 10 Habits of Highly Effective "Personal Advocacy." [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QkppYl5oi0