When I was a young child, I found it difficult to do as well as my younger brother did in school. It was often frustrating to me because I would study and try so hard to get an A, but my brother wouldn’t even study and easily get an A. It just didn’t seem fair. Why was learning harder for me?
When I went back to finish my Bachelor’s Degree, I found it helpful to walk around while I studied for a test. This seemed to help me retain the material better. Then I met, Karen P. Roth P.h.D. “She is an experienced classroom teacher, a former associate superintendent, and an international education consultant.” She worked for the Henry Ford Academy, and did several years of consulting teaching educators about Multiple Intelligences.
Karen shared with me very helpful information about kids and education, “We need to make learning accessible to all children. Some of us learn better through music, other’s are more visual, and even some people learn and retain knowledge better when they are outdoors. Most IQ is stuffed into two areas: Literacy and Mathematical Skills. The challenge with this is not all of us learn in those two areas. There are Multiple Intelligences, multiple ways each of us learn.”
There are eight identified Multiple Intelligences: Verbal, Visual-Spacial, Logic-Mathematical, Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalist. I struggled to learn because I process information differently than my brother. He was great at math, and I learn faster when I move around -this is Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence.
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence are kids that excel in one or more sports, they are more active individuals, and they also enjoys working with their hands. Each of the Multiple Intelligences have a distinct way of learning. Each of us may have parts of several of the Intelligences.
What a powerful tool for parents, teachers, aunts, uncles and grandparents to have in their arsenal of helping the kids in their lives grow and develop. Once we start to pinpoint how a child learns then we can turn on the excitement for knowledge. As Karen put it, “Children are our most precious resource.” So let’s find better ways to connect them to learning.
For more information on Multiple Intelligences check out these recommended readings:
Multiple Intelligence by Howard Gardner
The Naturalist Intelligence by Karen Roth
Multiple Intelligence in the Classroom by Thomas Armstrong
