Greater Things | August 23, 2022

by Susan McDonald on August 23, 2022

Learning Styles, Part 1

I am sure many, if not all, of you have heard of or taken a personality test, have read the book about the five love languages, or have been introduced lately to the enneagram (of which I am not a fan!).  We talk a lot in pedagogy and in other social circles about how people learn, how they interact with each other, and, most importantly, how we can understand each other better when we know how the other person ‘ticks’.

In my 35 years of education, my favorite way to identify a student’s learning style (or personality, for that matter) is in a scenario of the DISC method:

Let’s say a teacher is giving a test on Friday, but when the teacher starts the Friday morning school day, she says she is going to postpone the test till Monday. 

The “D” learner says, “Man! I would have done something else last night instead of studying if I had known this!”

The “S” learner says, “Isn’t that sweet of her.  She wants to give us more time to study.”

The “C” learner says, “But, it’s on my planner for today. It is scheduled for today.  How can you just up and move what is scheduled?”

And the “I” learner says, “We had a test today???”

(Did you see yourself in one of those personalities?)

My husband and I raised two boys.  One was a “D” and one was an “I.”  Raised by the same two people, in the same household, but totally different in their personalities, in how they tackled school, and how they interacted with the world.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Many times we, as Christians, erroneously think that verse means that if we raise a child in church, he or she will always stay with the Christian walk when he or she gets older.  But, if we look at the Hebrew term, “train up,” it means, “according to their bent.”  Their “bent” is how God made them.  He made each of us in His image with all different characteristics and personalities, and we need to discover what those are in our children and see them through the eyes of our Heavenly Father who created them. Then, when we see Proverbs 22:6 this way, it makes sense.

“One size fits all” is not a statement we hold true at Greater Things.  Each child has a “bent,” and it is up to us to mold and shape that child accordingly. 

Next week, in part 2 of this Nugget, I will talk about the different ways we, at Greater Things, are assessing each child to better understand how to help him or her in academics, enrichment, and spiritual growth.

Stay tuned…

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