Welcome
to Our World: The Gifted Visual Spatial
by
Amy Cortez, Editor - The Eclectic Telegraph
When
we first started homeschooling in 1999, I knew that my student
was gifted and really thought it was going to be such an easy
journey. Our first few months we used a purchased curriculum from
one of the more well known "homeschool friendly" curriculum
providers. My student literally "sucked" that dry in
a few months and was looking for more. I had pulled him from a
private school that was well known for academics because he wasn't
being challenged enough. I didn't want a repeat of that in our
homeschool so we took a trip to Florida when we reached the end
of all the books this purveyor of knowledge had sent as a "school
year". While on this trip, I realized that my student really
had a different way of absorbing ideas and had an intense memory
for the obtuse details. Talents I didn't have, but I admired..
When we returned from our trip I "winged it" for the
rest of that "school year" using videos and trips to
the library and museums. What I found from this experiment was
that my student, for lack of a better description, saw most things
in pictures and diagrams and learned things from pictures and
diagrams where I saw the world as an ordered place and ran my
life with lists and post-it notes.
It was over that summer I read two books: Multiple
Intelligences: The Theory in Practice & Frames
of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
both by Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University. These were very
enlightening to me. I had read all the "gifted books"
I could lay my hands on at the time and not one touched on the
ideas Dr. Gardner had. Even if an author had tied the words "gifted
and multiple intelligences" together, it would have been
a help in our situation. I tried to use as often as I could, really
visual resources in our learning experiences. Still, my student
and I locked horns for the next three and a half years over what
I saw as the simplest tasks. Multiplication tables from flash
cards was a nightmare for both of us. They are visual right? But
I could only try to impart the "stuff" I thought my
student needed to know in the way I learned it....I read more
books on how kids learned through those years, In
Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging Your Child's Multiple
Intelligences and In
Their Own Way by Thomas Armstrong were really good
at helping me to eventually realize that "child led"
learning was really the best way to go for us. It wasn't until
I stumbled onto a website in Denver that I found a pretty good
description of my student:
The
visual spatial learner thrives on complexity, yet struggles
with easy material; loves difficult puzzles, but hates drill
and repetition; is great at geometry and physics, but poor
at phonics and spelling. She has keen visual memory, but
poor auditory memory; is creative and imaginative, but inattentive
in class; is a systems thinker, all the while disorganized,
forgets the details. He excels in math analysis, but is
poor at calculation; has high reading comprehension, but
low word recognition; has an excellent sense of humor, and
performs poorly on timed tests. by Linda Kreger Silverman |
At
that point, I had my "label" and I could find all the
good ways to bring the world to my student. There aren't many
books written on the visual spatial learner, but after spending
the last 8 years exploring the world with one, I "get"
what homeschooling a visual spatial is all about. I can even write
stuff now that makes me sound like an expert, though I know I
am only an expert on how my student is. But because of the path
I took, I would wager it is similar to the path many other homeschooling
parents stumble along with a gifted visual spatial. I have gathered
a bit of understanding in what it means to homeschool a visual
spatial.
How
I Arrived at Our “Gifted” Homeschool Method
I found that there are four elements in getting your student interested
and invested in his own personal academic outcome. These elements
add up to your "method". It's not really all that complicated,
but these four items are important:
1. Recognize how your student learns
2. Recognize how you learn
3. Determine the best style to present opportunities for your
student to learn.
4. Take on the role of mentor and let your gifted student be the
student and the teacher.
I am mostly a verbal-sequential learner(auditory-sequential).
My student’s dominant learning style leans towards a global,
visual style. It wasn't’t until my student was age 11, that
we were actually aware of a label for his learning style: Visual
Spatial.
A verbal-sequential learner and a visual-spatial learner are at
opposite ends of the spectrum. Linda Kreger Silverman describes
this beautifully in her book Upside-Down
Brilliance: The Visual Spatial Learner" :
There
appear to be two major ways of learning:auditory-sequential
(more left hemisphere) and visual-spatial (more right hemisphere).
Auditory-sequential learners are good listeners, learn well
in a step-by-step process, tend to be rapid processors of
information and are generally able to express themselves
verbally. They are often able to compartmentalize their
reasoning from their emotions.
In contrast, visual-spatial learners are excellent observers,
comprehend holistically -may have sudden “Aha!”
understanding that leaps over steps - appear to think in
images, may need translation time to put their ideas into
words and sometimes have word retrieval problems. Their
thinking and emotions are very intertwined. |
My student is also more of an introvert. So he’s a visual-spatial-introverted
learner. I am mostly a verbal-sequential-extraverted learner.
This combination made for an interesting couple of years in our
homeschool.
Early on in our homeschool journey, I recognized that a couple
of “gifted” traits or tendencies in my student worked
well as themes for our homeschool.
My
student... has an evolved sense of humor & takes pleasure
in thinking divergently.
It was recognizing these themes that helped me through those early
years before I realized the importance of recognizing learning
style and personality. With the ever changing environment you
have with a gifted student, you just may hit some frustrating
dead ends. So recognizing these themes and utilizing strategies
that follow those ideas can help. In our homeschool, these themes
have dominated most of our strides forward and have helped transform
dead end paths to forks in the road again and again.
So to total it all up, we use a mix of eclectic-unschooling-school-at-home.
Here’s a magic formula:
Homeschool
Method = [(student’s dominant learning
style) + (teacher dominant learning style)] + [(student’s
personality) + (teacher personality)] / (theme(s))
|
Here's how we plug in what we know about ourselves to get our
"method":
eclectic-unschooling-school-at-home
= [(global, visual style) + (verbal-sequential)] + [(introvert)
+ (extravert)] / (humor+divergent-thinking) |
Got it?
The import ant idea to get from this discussion is that your homeschooling
method will be more successful, and you will experience less frustration,
if you take a little time to understand your own personality type
and learning style and your student’s.
I
have declared April to be "Visual Spatial" month, in
honor of my visual spatial's birthday being in April. We'll celebrate
his birthday the way we always do, but there will be some
extra movie and other visual things thrown in for the sake of
"Visual Spatial" Month. I have "squirreled so much
information on this topic, I even added a new page to our website
called: "Welcome
to Our World: The Visual Spatial" which is where a lot
of the text you just read came from. That page also includes resources
and successful techniques we have used. There's a link from that
page to a listing of the "stuff" I am done using and
is for sale to any other family homeschooling a visual spatial.
How do I homeschool my gifted student?
by Amy Cortez, Editor - The
Eclectic Telegraph
Well, now, there's a question. If you have a gifted child you
already know how intense life can be. If you're just finding out
that your child is gifted, hang on for an exciting ride. There's
a lot of advice from experts available these days about kids,
even about gifted kids. What I have learned is that no matter
what the "experts" have to say, until they actually
have the field experience with your gifted student, their
advice can really only be viewed as "guidelines". There's
not a "how-to" manual anywhere for your particular situation,
but you can gather as much information as you can to help you
make your own situation work splendidly. There are some common
threads with most gifted kids, at least that's what I've gathered
and witnessed. As part of your "how-to" lesson here,
pick one or two of these characteristics to keep in the back of
your mind that you use as "themes" in your homeschool....[read
on]