Yesterday, my son was so excited about this wordart idea that he took what he did to school and asked his teacher if he could use this idea in school. This is huge progress already. We have not seen him excited about learning to read or work with words in many months. He also is remembering the two words that he worked on, showing that he has in fact learned to spell these words and will remember what he learned long term. Words that would have normally taken months for him to memorize took him only a day to learn. I am extremely excited about the progress we are already seeing in this technique.
We also received test scores yesterday that show that this form of teaching is truly the best for him. Since he is a visual learner with a very slow processing speed, this teaching technique is playing on his strengths rather than his weaknesses. The hope is that with the multi-sensory attributes of this teaching technique, he will also inadvertently strengthen his weaknesses. His weaknesses are language based which explains why current methods of teaching provided by the school are failing him. The idea that verbal learning is for everyone is quite an obstacle in the the learning system when it comes to children like my son. Children who are not verbal learners can not possibly retain what they have “learned” as efficiently as they would if they were taught based on their learning style. The idea of memorizing is also inefficient as it has been proven that the brain processes memorized information very differently than it processes learned information. The sensory cues that are remembered after learned information is processed, are not there with memorized information. Memorizing is primarily for test cramming is is forgotten when the information is no longer needed. Multi-sensory teaching techniques are wonderful for people as they will not only play on the strengths and learning style of each individual, they will also strengthen the weaknesses of the person learning with these sorts of techniques.
Currently, my son is being made to read a book out loud every day until he “remembers” the words he reads based on repetition. This book is the same book for several weeks on end. Thus, creating more of a routine than a learning experience. If you think about the routines that you have in your life, do you have any learning experiences from those routines? Can you recall what you learn from those routines? I know that routines that I do everyday, do not teach me anything. I can drive my children to school everyday at exactly the same time and during that trip, I do not learn to drive better. There is not motivation in a routine to change the routine, improve the routine, or learn from anything in the routine. In order to learn there has to be a sort of excitement involved. You have to wonder and look forward to what you might learn next. You have to gain the desire to learn.
I am confused as to why teachers who had to of gone to college can not see the flaws in this teaching system, but a self-learning artist can. What exactly does that mean in the world and why are they unwilling to make the necessary changes to move the learning system in a way that will benefit all children? I question the teaching ability and teaching quality of people who are unwilling to change their styles and unwilling to look for solutions to obvious problems. Based on these teaching styles, I believe children are not getting the full effect of what they learn and therefore, could not effectively use what they learn in everyday life unless directed to do so. This is where the gap of book learning and life learning comes into play. I would suggest to all people who feel that they have not learned effectively to explore multi-sensory learning techniques that they can use on their own to help them learn more efficiently. These are things that you can come up with yourself and all you need is a little bit of creativity, brain storming, and problem solving skills.
One idea that I came up with and thought would help my son, was that he write the stories he read while he read them which would have effectively played on his visual learning style and his motor skills. Sadly, this idea was dismissed and ignored by the teachers, so we did not see how it would have worked in the school setting. The frustration level for him has been so high because of the learning styles being used, that he was unwilling to try this technique with me and we have really had to work hard to get him to look at new ideas as opportunities that could help him. I really think that this technique would have helped him a great deal if it had been done when I made the suggestion last year, but it would have had of been a team effort. The unwillingness to try new things by the people teaching my son has basically “undone” what I have taught him and created a great deal of turmoil and anxiety for him. Children need to know that there are different ways of doing things and that as long as you get to where you need to be, it doesn’t matter how you got there. There is no one way to learn and there is no one way to solve problems. If there was, then where would the opportunities and wonder of life be? The idea of universal sameness is ridiculous! No two people are exactly the same and therefore no two teaching styles can be identical. Even identical twins can not truly be considered identical since they have different personalities, learning styles, goals, and so much more. It is like looking at the outside of a book and saying that all writers write exactly the same. You aren’t getting the big picture of anything with this way of doing things and with this mindset. And therefore causing children to only learn bits and pieces of a subject rather then teaching them to dive into a subject and learn all that can be learned. As this cycle continues, I question what will happen to the creativity and imagination of children and people in general. If people are not taught that there is more to things and not taught the motivation to look for more, what will happen to the imagination of people and the success that could have been obtained? What happens when people no longer ask questions and no longer seek out better ways of doing things? This greatly effects not just Autistic children but all children.
These are some of the things that I think about. I believe that all children deserve that best education that they can possibly have. They need the very best start in life that we, as adults, can give them. For them to be successful in society and for our society to be successful in general, children must have the best educational experience that they can possibly have. Are the schools giving children the very best that they can? I don’t believe that they are and I don’t believe that they will until society as a whole begins to fight for the rights of children to have all aspects of learning that they deserve. I realize that there is concern for school budgets and people wonder how they could possibly afford to teach children appropriately without the budget to do so. I question the abilities to budget the funding that is received. Was Albert Einstein taught by millionaires? This is a man of great intelligence who gave us some of the most important knowledge that we have. Think about the time in which he lived and ask yourself, if he could learn to the extent that he did, why can’t our children? We have twice as much technology and yet, our greatest thinkers came long before technology existed. Our greatest thinkers gave us the possibility to have the technology that we have. If our current teaching styles are so much better, then why do we not have even greater thinkers now?
I leave you with all of these questions and urge you to help your children become great thinkers by teaching them using teaching styles that will play on their strengths and that will urge them to thirst for more knowledge of the world.
