Review by Jean Marie Barch from the Fall 2001 issue of FGConnections

Some people will choose this book because it is short. In just 48 pages, Mary Rose O’Reilley draws us into the essence of a whole different way of looking at what can go on in the classroom. Although her words are few, her concept of teaching is vast and radical. The author describes herself as a Buddhist, Catholic, Quaker. These three traditions entwine to inform her view that teaching well and living well spring from the same root: being deeply present. She reflects on teach-ing practice that grows from listening well and completely to the student. The learning follows from being listened to rather than being spoken at. When we are heard, we grow in our assimilation of truth. O’Reilley tells us that we live well when we are present for others and have others who are present for us. She feels that the teacher can allow students’ growth through the creation of space in the classroom.

Most of us think in terms of filling a space: filling the number of minutes between the beginning and end of class, filling the student’s notebooks, filling the students’ head. These are responsible gestures, sanctioned by custom . . . what if, instead of feeding we were to honor the hunger with which our students come to school?

She also speaks of the need for deep listening in friendships which creates the substrate for growth in both friends. She describes a relationship in which she and a friend spend time each week listening to each other. They have learned, she tells us, that the discipline is in taking turns deeply listening and then being listened to. Honoring the student’s hunger to learn and the friend’s need to be heard both follow logically from the belief that there is that of God in everyone enhanced by Zen notions of waiting patiently for under-standing to come to us. As she knows it, the job of the teacher is to create the opening in which students can know and experience their hunger. As the teacher, we can only know another’s hunger by giving space for the hunger to identify itself. By honoring the inner teacher, and responding to that hunger in another, the teacher or the friend can help open the path for learning, listening the other into fuller understanding.

The translation of faith into practice is nowhere more difficult that amid the clutter provided by academic traditions. In a simple yet radical presentation, Mary Rose O’Reilley suggests that we strip away these traditions and reach for the essential truths in the educative process. She encourages us to be open to listening in order that we might teach, an extension of the Quaker notion of inward listening in order that we might hear that still, small Voice and learn. She suggests that we take time, in the classroom and in our daily lives, to be present, to listen, to create an opening into which others can be received. Through these methods, we can live, and teach, well.