The Whole Spectrum

One of my philosophies of teaching is to never stop learning myself, and to always bring aspects of life I find meaningful and beautiful into my classes. One of the aspects of human nature and learning that has always fascinated me is the concept of multiple intelligences. As someone with high Existential intelligence, this would make sense, right? I love to learn how people think, and step into their points of view. I think this tactic also translates very well into the classroom, and I think teachers would spend less time worrying about lesson plans and Common Core standards if they really focused on their students!

In class last week, I introduced the theme of "Focus" for October and gave each student a multiple intelligence survey. I was happy to find that most of the students seemed to really enjoy this activity and were interested in learning about themselves. After the students completed the survey and found their categories of highest intelligence, I wrote each of their names on the board underneath the different categories so the whole class could see the distribution of people's talents. There were a large number of kinesthetic learners in each class, which did not surprise me, and many students also scored highest in Intrapersonal intelligence, meaning that they have to motivate themselves with the right attitude for learning before they can truly take anything to heart. Even though we had classes weighted this way, I emphasized that as teachers, we can't ignore an area of intelligence simply because only one or two students fall into that category. We have to find ways to reach the students using all of these intelligences to best fit our subject. Going along with that, I noticed that there were only one or two verbal learners out of the four classes I gave the survey to, indicating that I will need to teach English in ways other than just reading and taking notes!

I think all teachers should take just a few minutes of a class period to give their students surveys like this. The students will understand that we as teachers really care about them, and they might change their perception of school as a "jail" or other unpleasant place if they sense this care and devotion to teaching. They also might figure out valuable information about themselves that they weren't even sure of before.