July 2009

Inside This Issue:

What Does Learning Failure Mean?
What Does it Take to Reverse It?
What Went Wrong?
What to Do

Teaching takes place in groups and classrooms. Learning takes place one mind at a time.

What Does Learing Failure Mean?

When a child fails to learn in school, does this mean he or she cannot learn? If, in fact, he or she can learn, but has not learned yet, what needs to be different to make this happen? And if he or she does not learn, but just moves on, what does this cost his or her future? Consider the surprising story of Minnie.

Minnie Blackwell was in her 40s when she decided to try one more time to fulfill her lifelong dream to be a teacher. She had set this goal aside for 25 years because she could not learn math. Or so she thought. Her problems with math traced back to when she was in school. Now, all these years later, she was back in school studying to be a teacher, and math was her roadblock again. She could not pass the math section of the standardized test required to practice teach. She was up to her third and final try on the test, for life.

What Does it Take to Reverse it?

Minnie begged to be tutored one-on-one before her final chance at the test. Her tutor, working with her individual mind and learning style, was able to see math through her eyes, and thus to spot the critical misconceptions and gaps that were the cause of her problems. She needed to learn math HER way--- using her own very visual way of learning. When her mind was engaged in this way, and her specific misconceptions were corrected, she was able to reverse the problems causing her to fail.

How long did this transformation take? Five hours.

But that is not the most surprising part of the story. Minnie did retake the test and scored 148 out of a possible 150 on the math section. When she later took the teacher certification exam, she scored two “Areas of Strength” -- one in art, and the other in MATH. She went on to become a teacher, obtain a doctorate, seek and win funding for an astronomy program for her school system, and thrive in the profession of her dreams.

What Went Wrong?

How can this be? What happened after over 40 years to transform a person who appeared to be a math failure into one who clearly was brilliant in math? And what would her life have been had this transformation occurred when she was a child instead of all those years later?

To understand the answers to this dilemma requires knowledge about how the mind learns. Teaching takes place in groups and classrooms. Learning takes place one mind at a time. When there is an apparent failure to learn, this does not mean that there is an inability to learn. It means that there is a need to learn in a different way.

An individual mind is a unique combination of styles that dictate how that mind receives and processes what needs to be learned. Only some minds receive by listening. Some receive by viewing words or symbols. Others receive through seeing images or through action. Mental processing styles vary too. To process what they learn, some need to reflect on abstractions (“What” learners). Others need to act on abstractions (“How” learners), reflect on the concrete (“Why” learners) or act on the concrete (“What for” learners).

What to Do

When learning success does not happen within the larger group at school, one-on-one tutoring can make a critical difference. Mastery Tutors (www.masterytutors.com) has seen this process work many times.

Why? Because a one-on-one tutor can work with the individual mind of the child. Learning failure or difficulty need not be endured. Learning success is possible. And learning matters. At any age, learning gaps shut out future gains and confidence. And learning success opens those doors.

The potential to learn is there…one mind at a time.

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