Connecting Minds to Learning

I recently met Dr. Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa who is the Director of the Center for Educational Development in Quito, Ecuador and Professor of Education, at the University of San Francisco de Quito.  She is the author of several books, Living Languages: Multilingualism Across the Lifespan (Praeger, 2007), Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children (Bergin and Garvey, 2000) and The Multilingual Mind: Issues Discussed by, for, and about People Living with Many Languages (Praeger, 2003).  I have been a fan of her writing for a number of years.

Tracey was telling me that the focus of her new work is in the areas of Mind, Brain, and Education.  In 2009 she will have a new book published entitled The Scientifically Substantiated Art of Teaching.

There seem to be so many natural synergies between her work and research and the work that we are doing.  I am looking forward to the publication of her new book.

No doubt you’ve experienced having a thought that strikes you like lightening and changes your whole perspective on things.  This happened to me a few days ago.  Until I got hit by a bolt of lightening, I thought that teachers who understood the diverse ways that their students learn could directly improve student learning.  In other words, if we could provide teachers with best practice strategies and knowledge about how students learn (which they implement in their classrooms) then this would improve student learning.  There is nothing too wrong with this assumption except that I now see that the idea is missing a crucial piece of the process – the student.  I am now thinking that teachers can’t improve student achievement, only students can improve student achievement.  Any actions, accommodations or interventions that a teacher uses to improve student learning will only work if these strategies successfully encourage a student to change their perspective, attitude or behaviour towards learning.  If this is so, then what kinds of conversations do we need to initiate with students to enable them to understand their learning profile and to become advocates of their own learning style?

In 1952, as I discovered in one of my grandfather’s old books, in the House of Commons, Sir Winston Churchill was accused by the Labour Opposition of diametrically altering his views.  To this charge he retorted: “My views are a harmonious process which keeps them in relation to the current movement of events.”

I am adopting this idea throughout my blog.  Any thoughts or points of view that I express here could (and probably will) change as a result of ongoing interactions and conversations with others.  This is a special invitation you, dear reader, to articulate your thoughts and ideas about the comments expressed in this blog.  In this way, we can learn and deepen our understanding together.

I think I was officially the last person in the world to purchase a digital camera.  And I suppose I am one of the last remaining people in the universe writing a blog for the very first time.  I have no idea what has taken me so long.

I have developed this blog to share ideas about how we can work together to transform education for students who learn differently…

“When there is something within our reach that will help people,

We should stretch for it with determination.

If the people who will benefit have been misunderstood by society,
We should move even faster.

And if these people are children,

We should ask ourselves what has taken us so long.”