What's My Learning Style?

I recently took the Index of Learning Styles questionnaire and found my results to be quite predictable but interesting nonetheless.

Being balanced between active and reflective provides me with a happy medium. I find that my learning style jumps between the two depending on what I am learning. For example, in mathematics, I am generally an active learner while in the classroom. While studying at home, I tend to be reflective. If I am still unsure about a concept after studying alone, I will try studying in a group to find out what has helped others.

I have always been a very factual person so a moderate leaning (5) towards sensing is no surprise. If I can’t see how something relates to my daily life, I often find it easy to write it off as being irrelevant. Memorization tactics and hands-on activities have always helped. For someone like myself who studied psychology (a field of study that is filled with theories), I learned to make connections with reality and theories. The main question was always: How can I make this relatable to my everyday life? By striving to answer this question, I was successful at understanding and memorizing the theories.

As a self-proclaimed visual learner, getting a high score of 9 came as no surprise to me. This ties in closely to me being a sensing learner. You can tell me something and I may question it but if I can see it for myself, I am more likely to understand and believe it. I have always been big on visual aids and have amassed a large number of highlighters in various colors for color coding purposes, especially when studying. Over the years, I have learned to re-write my notes by drawing diagrams and finding my own visual aids to understand concepts that would otherwise be difficult if I simply heard it from a teacher.

Last but not least is sequential and global, both of which I am well balanced in. My approach depends on what I am learning as well as that subject’s complexity. There are times when following logical steps is easy. Other times, I struggle with understanding complex issues, leading me to quickly create any method that helps me understand what I am doing. The downside is that I am often unable to explain how I did it. In the end, I either learn how to do it the logical way or stick to the short cut method that I created.

This information definitely relates to my personal philosophy of education. It is important to educate students in a way that grabs their attention and to provide activities that allow them to shine in their own way. By creating groups with students who have different learning styles, each student can contribute information in their own way that leads to dynamic results. Knowing and understanding the characteristics behind each learning style is also important when creating lessons, especially when introducing new ideas. Slideshow presentations with pictures and audio may be appealing to visual and verbal learners. Adding a graphic organizer that is completed and discussed (active) as a class group not only helps sequential learners understand the steps in a process, global learners may benefit by seeing the big picture once the activity has been completed. Reflective learners may then take a copy of this organizer home, where they will be able to review it on their own. If the topic you are teaching is generally abstract or based on a theory (sensing), it is important to make connections with real life, practical scenarios that everyone can relate to (intuitive).

Regardless of how each a teacher chooses to teach, is always vital to remind students that asking questions if further clarification is needed is essential and that reviewing classroom notes at home is fundamental in learning.

Destined to Teach

My journey into the field of education can be summed up by a simple French proverb, “One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it.” Hailing from a family with education as its heritage (both of my parents are teachers...and a large number of my aunts, uncles and cousins), I promised myself that I would not become an educator. I vowed to leave the ‘family business’ and venture out on my own. Although I had no clear idea as to what my desired career would be, I knew that working with children was my main goal.

Upon entering college, I chose pediatric nursing, as an act of rebellion towards my parents who wanted me to pursue a career in education. I later changed my major to psychology where I excelled and hoped to pursue a career in child psychology. I graduated and immediately began searching for jobs as I planned for graduate school. I soon became discouraged. Unbeknownst to me, I was among a generation of college graduates who would enter a workforce where few jobs were available.

After months of searching independently, my parents urged me to apply for any non-instructional positions available within the school district. I reluctantly filled out my application, applied and was surprised to receive a phone call from an administrator at North Marion Middle School who was interested in interviewing me for a position in the discipline office. I got the job and could not have been more excited yet horrified. I came to the realization that my destiny was staring me in my face and I had no choice but to surrender to it. I began taking the necessary steps needed to become an educator and have been successful thus far.

A year has passed since I have been hired and I have been promoted to the information processing clerk position at my school. With each year, I have grown more knowledgeable and intrigued at how much is involved in operating a school. Upon being hired as a teacher, I would like to teach language arts. Many of my favorite teachers during high school were language arts teachers. I enjoyed learning about authors, the inspiration and meaning behind their work and how their work relates to our lives. It is my hope that I can inspire my future students to explore books in the same way that my past teachers have done for me.