Changing Paradigms, Learning Styles, Art and Harry Potter

First I’m going to start with the video. I have always loved this video because it points out facts that are so often overlooked, particularly about ADHD in schools and school design. My view on ADHD diagnosis in young children is that they are behaving as young boys and girls do, with the addition of the fast-paced, instant gratification giving society we currently live in, it may make them want to sit still or pay attention for shorter amounts of time. I think the diagnosis is partially laziness on the part of the parents, teachers and other important adults in the child’s life. As the video points out, I don’t think that ADHD is completely made up, but I think it is widely over diagnosed. Looking at members of myself and members of mine own family, we often like to joke we are stricken with Larsen Adult ADD. We all have a hard time sitting still and focusing on one thing for long periods of time, unless it is a book. My dad was kicked out of kindergarten for being too wild, I can only imagine today that his pediatrician may have suggested a Ritalin prescription.

My other favorite part of the video is its discussion of school design, particularly when it discusses how schools were built to be like factories. The class I originally watched this in, a T&L class whose name I can’t quite remember, we went on to discuss how schools architecture then went on to be built to resemble prisons and are now built to look like malls. I always got a kick out of this because the same person who designed my high school, Wenatchee High School, also designed Chelan County Jail. The whole building which had between 2000 and 2200 students during my time there had a handful of windows in the classrooms. My friends and I were always excited when we got our new schedules and found out one of our rooms had a window. Even though the windows were often placed in the back corner of the room, away from the white board. My junior year they remodeled the front of the school and added a big window façade (go figure) and a new common area and a very small outdoor eating area we referred to as “The Cage” because it was cement on all sides and instead of having open air pillars there were metal grates to keep students in. Very bizarre, yet somehow appropriate with the design of the rest of the school.

This is the new front of the school circa 2007.

Now onto the readings. The Stahl piece, Different Strokes for Different Folks: A Critique of Learning Styles was interesting because it cited so much research that invalidated information that is often shoved down our throat in Human Development and T&L classes. I distinctly remember studying Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences for tests and having to identify for class which of the intelligences I fall under. As a teacher we are taught to incorporate many different kinds of activities into any given lesson: hands on, physical movement, art, manipulatives, drama etc. While I think the incorporation of these different activities is just good practice to get all students involved and excited about the lesson, it’s interesting to know this may not necessarily impact their learning or retention of information solely because there are different options. Although this is where I question the research against learning styles because if a child is more involved and excited about their learning, aren’t they more likely to retain it? Or is it just a fun activity that then exits their brain as quickly as a boring kill and drill exercise. I found the Smagorinsky article to contradict the idea that students do not learn more or gain more out of a lesson if they enjoy it more or make personal connections to it. “Without this process of personal examples to enrich school understandings, academic knowledge is hollow and difficult to construct meaning for,”(p.199). I did appreciate Stahl’s explanation of the learning styles as “Gardner’s attempt to expand the notion of what we think is intelligent behavior to people who are skilled in music, or dance or even in interpersonal relations,”(Stahl, 1999). This is at least one part of Gardner’s work that I find to be truly important, if he at all helped legitimize the arts as part of a school curriculum.

The Smagorinsky article on Vygotsky was my favorite this week because it gave some historical background that I had never considered before and was so relatable to practical application in the classroom. Something we have all dealt with either in school or in our adult lives is being shut down by another person mid-sentence. This never feels good no matter what age you are and it seems to happen in K-12 classes all the time, whether it is from a lack of time to have a real discussion or a power trip on the part of the teacher/student. I think Vygotsky is completely right in his idea that the feeling of inferiority that stems from this repeatedly happening is more debilitating than any actual learning disability a student may have.

Prior to reading this article I didn’t realize that Vygotsky was such an art enthusiast or his background in literature. I loved his emphasis on meta-experience and imagination, particularly “Thus, a person does not simply think about art, or respond emotionally to it, but has emotional reactions that when reflected upon, enable a person to consider more profoundly the depths of the human experience,”(Smagorinsky, p. 195). I love art and plan to widely incorporate it in my classroom, whether it is art projects or students learning about different famous artists. I also think art is a great way to incorporate different cultures into the classroom and let kids practice creativity and fine motor skills in a safe space, which Vygotsky goes on to discuss as mentioned later in the article. My own love of art started when I was very little and my grandma brought me a children’s book based around Degas paintings from her trip to Paris. These are a few of the books I have purchased to build my art library:

 

I found this article drawing a lot of similarities to the video, especially when it discusses how not all children are represented in their own schools which may be “dedicated to the values of the white middle class,”(Smagorinsky, p. 196). The article goes on to further discuss cultural inclusion in the classroom through different art forms such as hip hop which of course made me think of this:

The questions I drew from this article were:

1. What are ways to include more exploratory thought in elementary school classrooms
2. How does the slant toward standardized testing impact student’s ability to use exploratory thought?
3. How do you currently or plan to incorporate student's cultures into your classroom?

I found the Davila and Patrick article to be a whole lot of “No Duh!!” information. I was almost tempted to throw in “Oh Really?! With Seth and Amy”. Of course a kid is going to want to read the Harry Potter series or Captain Underpants instead of a Newberry award winner with a boring name. I did find it interesting (and completely reflected in my own life) when it was mentioned in the article that Harry Potter readers, “especially those that read all seven books in the series, were more passionate about reading than non-Potter readers in the study,”(p. 202). I read the Sorcerer’s Stone in the third grade after my mom randomly picked it up and thus began my life-long love of Harry Potter. Many of the books in the series were often released on my birthday so that made them extra special to me as I anxiously waited for the mailperson to bring me my favorite birthday present (which I would then start reading and barely stop for meals until I finished). I think the Harry Potter series is one of the big reasons my love of reading really took off and I think this is the same for many others my age and continues for the young children that are still discovering it. 

Finally, the Santangelo, Knotts, Clemmer and Mitchell article was very informative on parts of differentiated instruction that I did not previously understand. Though DI was emphasized in my undergraduate career I never heard the different types: content, process, and product, until this class. The best piece of advice I found from this article was Tomlinson’s edict on differentiation:

“We would differentiate better if we always expect too much of kids, rather than expect too little. When in doubt, teach up. I’ve never met a kid who couldn’t do more than I thought he or she could. Under the right circumstances, every kid can do more than we believe l we compliment them by giving them something that’s a little too hard and by helping them get there…”(p. 202).

I also loved their point that group activities need to be organized in a way that every child is able to have a prominent role and make a contribution that matters beyond jobs like “timekeeper” (You always knew the kids in the group that wanted that job just wanted to check out, even as a child). This article goes on to discuss learning profiles. Which a part of me is a little confused what the difference is between learning profile and learning style. What’s the difference? Is learning profile just made up of preferences for an optimal learning environment? But do those preferences make a difference when it comes down to the amount of learning going on?

So in conclusion most of my burning questions are coming from learning styles. I hope we read more on this in the future. While I understand that the research behind learning styles is completely lacking accountability, how similar is it to learning preferences or profiles or any of the other language these other articles used? I agree that learning styles may be a big piece of teacher folklore, but I think it is important to consider children’s “preferences” so that they feel at home in the classroom.