While reading through these four articles I instantly thought about how I was as a learner and how I am as a teacher. I related to a lot of the articles in a sense that I've either done them as a teacher or experienced them as a learner. I think the most surprising one was the
visual and verbal learners myth. This stated that people may not learn best from a learning style when taught in a way that matches their beneficial learning. I was surprised and ultimately dismissed this one too because I know what works best for me and it works in every subject area I try. I know I am a visual learner and I need some type of print or activity in front of me. I have been in lecture where only verbal talk was the way of learning. I spent more time making sure I wrote down all the important words the professor was saying rather than actually learning from them. Therefore, I don't agree that students don't learn best if you teach a concept towards their learning style of visual or verbal. I also semi don't agree that Gardner's multiple intelligences aren't a guideline to the educational system. I have had classes, such as Child Development, that taught us the importance of learning which eight are your strength and weaknesses in order to help you best learn a concept. The
article dealing with Gardner stated an example:
"For example, to help students learn punctuation, a teacher might have them form punctuation marks with their bodies (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence), assign an animal sound to each punctuation mark (naturalist intelligence), and sort sentences according to the required punctuation (logical-mathematical intelligence)."
I remember learning and currently are doing a type of this activity with my students in my CT's classroom. We uses body motions and visual cues to accomplish Handwriting. We relate how you form a letter to a certain area the students know and have them write the letter with different body parts. Therefore, incorporating our visual learners, our kinesthetic learners, and verbal learners by saying, doing, and participating in the words. Thus I would say that when designing a lesson plan, I keep in mind the eight multiple intelligences and make sure I at least are incorporating three of them. This is because I know at least one of the ones I choose my students can relate to because I identified their strengths and weakness intelligences. I understand that the article did say that Gardner believes you need to teach multiple of the intelligences into a lesson, which is what I have been keeping in mind. However, I don't agree with the fact that Gardner believes that teachers have a shallow understanding of the intelligences. In my child development book, it clearly identifies what each one looks like in regards to a child's reaction. That is why I semi disagree with that article.
Finally, if someone higher above me (a teacher) were to tell me that for some reason because of evidence that students don't learn from this learning technique and I need to change my teaching style. I would try it there way for a couple lessons. If I notice my students aren't responding as well as I would like them to be, I would bring that information to "them" and politely ask (with the support of my own research in my class because every class you have will respond differently to the new approach) that I can keep teaching my students the way you would like but I see more benefit in my old way of forming a lesson then from this new technique change. Ultimately, they are higher than me; thus, I would have to listen and do what they say. However, it doesn't hurt to show support about your claim and bring your concerns to the higher up people.
