Have you ever felt like you were a really good student, but not necessarily in the way that learning took place when you were in school? Did school sometimes make you feel stupid? Many of us feel that way, and because of that, many of us also feel that we shouldn’t be very smart.
In formal education you basically learned to learn in two or three ways: the famous “reading, writing and ‘rhythmics'” that are at the core of most of the learning we do in school.
Take a quick inventory of some learning strategies in the table below. See what you can learn about your own learning!
When you have something you really want to learn or something you need to teach others, what do you do?
Please check all in the list below that apply. Trust your intuition. Don’t over analyze this! You can also add some of your own ideas to the bottom of the list.
___ Talk to other people to get their advice
___ Read books or articles on the topic
___ Listen to informational tapes or CDs
___ Attend a workshop, seminar, or special training session
___ Watch a video, DVD, or go to a movie
___ Find information on the internet
___ Just find out for yourself
___ Make diagrams, pictures, flowcharts, information graphics
___ Memorize facts, figures, concepts, or statistics related to the topic
___ Interview an expert or someone else with knowledge
___ Do research at the library or buy books on the topic
___ Spend time alone thinking about it
___ Subscribe to magazines, newspapers, or periodicals
___ Observe and copy a teacher
___ Watch educational television programs
___ Seek some kind of guidance or spiritual knowledge
___ Go for a walk to reflect
___ Meditate on it
___ Make up a song, jingle, or rhyme to help remember
___ Get out in nature
___ Find a coach or mentor to consult with
How many of the items you checked did you use when you were in school? To learn more intelligently, we have to find ways to harness our true genius for learning.
I want to tell you two stories to illustrate what I have been talking about so far. Both are stories about my daughters. Neither of them learned in the traditional way. They struggled throughout their formal education and aggravated their teachers in the process!
DAUGHTER’S STORY #1
My oldest son is a great BodySmart learner. When he was in school, he always moved in his seat. Often his teachers had to tell him to sit down because he would be at someone else’s desk wondering what they were doing.
At home, when she was doing her homework, she used the “wandering nomad” approach to learning: she was all over the house, first lying on the floor with her feet up on a coffee table, then, a few minutes later, going to the kitchen to have a snack with a book in hand, read. Next, she would be sitting on the back of a sofa. She would often say to him, “Esther, could you start on your homework?”
She would tell me, “Dad, I’m doing it. I’m almost done!” Her teachers often thought she was trying to disrupt the class, but at home she always said, “If I’m going to learn this, I have to move.” And she was right. If she had made her study my way, she never would have made it. When she did it her way, she learned the required material quickly and easily.
I also found that whenever she could incorporate physical movement into the learning itself, through role-play, dance, physical exercise, and gestures, she learned the required information faster, remembered it longer, and, more importantly, she would have a much deeper understanding of what she was studying.
DAUGHTER’S STORY #2
My youngest daughter, Naomi, is very good at ImageSmart. At school she drove her teachers crazy with her endless doodles during lectures. Every margin of every worksheet or paper was filled with little drawings, pictures, scribbles, and doodles. She carried a secret supply of colored markers in her bag. When the teacher had her back turned, the markers came out so she could add color to her drawing.
Many teachers told her, “Naomi, put those markers away and pay attention!” He put away the bookmarks, but strangely enough, as soon as he put them away, he no longer paid attention. There was something about the activity of her scribbles, drawings, pictures, colors, patterns, and doodles that kept her engaged in a lesson.
For Naomi to learn something, she had to be able to visually represent it in some way through drawing, painting, sculpting, or creating images inside her head.
“MULTI-MODAL” TEACHING AND LEARNING
I’m suggesting that if you want to reach everyone, whenever you provide mentoring, coaching, and training, you should teach whatever you’re teaching “multimodally.” What is multimodal teaching and learning? In one word…
— The more different ways you learn something, the more you really learn it.
— The more different ways you learn something, the more you will remember it.
— The more different ways you learn something, the more you will genuinely understand and assimilate it.
I want you to see how easy and fun it is to re-teach yourself and your participants to learn in this way. You used to know how to do this when you were a kid, so really all I’m suggesting is to reawaken how you once learned!
The 8 types of intelligence (also known as multiple intelligences), which are already within each of us, provide you and your participants with an easy and practical way to learn and teach in a multimodal way. For real learning to occur, it must occur throughout your entire brain-mind-body system!