Celebrating Diverse Minds by Mel

¶ … Celebrating diverse minds by Mel Levine in the journal Educational Leadership discusses the "trouble" student, who may excel in some areas while under performing in others. The author maintains these problems may lead educators to making false assumptions about the students that can follow them through their education and adult lives. He maintains learning differences exist in a large majority of children, and these differences must be understood and managed for education to be effective. He writes, "A student may be brilliant at visualizing, but embarrassingly inept at verbalizing" (Levine, 2003, p. 12). The author calls this an educational challenge, and proposes that these children need to understand and embrace their strengths so they can stop being so demoralized by the educational experience. He also maintains it is the job of the educational system to identify and play up these strengths throughout the educational system. Finally, he maintains that most assessment tools are not up to the task of identifying and helping these students, and that the curriculum needs to be reinvented as well.

Personally, this article is extremely close to home, as I have friends who have children who fit this pattern. They are extremely proficient at verbal and reading skills, but they do not visualize or conceptualize well. This has affected their performance at school, and it was not educational professionals that identified the problem, but counselors who were seeing the children for "behavioral" problems. I think this makes me more aware of the many learning differences that are identified and that I may experience in the classroom, and I think it will give me tools to deal with them more affectively. I also hope that curriculum and testing practices will change so those tools can help me in the classroom as well. The author recommends professional development for educators, and I completely agree with this assessment.