Listening Up: Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students, Rachel Martinr (Boynton-Cook/Heinemann, 2001)

From the introduction to the epilogue of Listening Up, Rachel Martin charges and inspires us as adult educators to write more about our practice and who we are in relation to it. This work requires more than sharing our successes; it means documenting "what we are seeing in our work, how what we see is forcing us to change our ideas, how our ideas are compelling us to change what we "see" and how it really feels day after day." (p.3 ) Listening Up is a manifestation of that charge. In clear, graceful language, Martin shares her journey-one full of change, critique, contradictions, thoughtful reflection, and action. She opens her mind, taking us along, asking us to imagine that we are part of her dialogue on radical pedagogy and progressive literacy education.

In the beginning of Listening Up, Martin discusses the five different educational settings that serve as the backdrop for the practice woven throughout the book as well as the Freirean pedagogy that influenced her early teaching. She then talks about why she began to critique radical pedagogy and the poststructural and psychoanalytic theories that influenced this critique. Martin uses personal and classroom examples to illustrate theory and practice. She doesn't shy away from looking critically at her own roles, actions, and thoughts; indeed, this is what makes the book so engaging.

Teaching Writing
The last three chapters look at techniques for teaching writing and reading and for creating curricula. In harmony with the rest of the writing, these chapters offer more than lists of suggestions for practitioners. Originally intended as a book of classroom methods, Martin discovered as she wrote that she "needed it (the book) to show that progressive classroom methods work only if grounded in attempts to move beyond often unperceived beliefs, held by both teachers and students, that impede their implementation." (p. 8-9). While it is possible simply to skim and pull out useful techniques, more careful reading continues to reveal the questioning and analysis that led Martin on a path toward a new pedagogy.

This book provides a rich backdrop for us to examine ourselves as educators as well as the pedagogy that guides our work. Martin touches on complex issues: contradictions between Freire's words and actions; questions about who is defining the field of adult literacy; issues of race and power; explorations of "co-learning" and what it truly means. Listening Up is a thought-provoking work, largely due to the questions Martin raises about some of the most fundamental and widely accepted practices and theories in progressive literacy education.

Michele Sedor is an Associate Coordinator at SABES West. She has worked as an ABE, GED, and ESOL teacher and trainer. She can be reached at msedor@hcc.mass.edu