ACS Tri-School professional development conference with the internationally renowned learning expert Dr Mel Levine

Faculty from all three campuses of ACS International had the enviable opportunity to attend a two-day professional development workshop at the University of London given by Dr. Mel Levine on January 27-28, 2006. The presentation, entitled, "Teaching All Kinds of Minds" stressed ways in which the wiring of an individual's brain can lead to differences in both academic performance and success in life.

Levine is a medical doctor, learning expert, and researcher, who is also the co-founder of the All Kinds of Mind Institute, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the goals of helping families, teachers, and clinicians understand why a child is struggling in school and providing practical strategies to help the child be more successful. A self-professed "geek", Dr. Levine is also a wonderfully charismatic speaker who provided the audience of teachers, parents and administrators with invaluable information on teaching and learning, while keeping them engaged and laughing throughout the two-day presentation.

He began his lecture by presenting short vignettes of children he had worked with in the past. Each child he described was bright and talented in his or her own way. Each had a special interest or affinity that, at least in the past, had been the focus of much passion and excitement for the child. Unfortunately, however, each child was also close to the end of his rope because he was struggling so much in school. It turned out that these children all had breakdown points in one or more of the neurodevelopmental functions of their brains. In other words, the way their brains were wired, caused them to have difficulty performing certain academic tasks.

This is true with every individual - each person's brain is wired in such a way that some tasks will be more difficult than others. In fact, since learning is a developmental process, sooner or later most people will face a learning situation which their brain is "not wired for" and thus this situation will be very difficult. Unfortunately for the students in Levine's stories (and for thousands of children who struggle in school), many of the tasks that are demanded in academic settings on a daily basis are tasks that their brains are not "wired" to accomplish easily. This can lead to frustration, a sense of failure, or even a lack of hope. Dr. Levine's goal, therefore is to train teachers, parents and others in ways to help figure out how each individual child's brain is wired so that his difficulties can be understood and a sense of hope can be restored.

His years of experience in working with children who struggle in school, along with relevant research in the fields of education, neurology and learning disabilities, have all pointed to the same conclusion: all minds work differently and we all have areas of relative strengths and weaknesses which show themselves as significant learning differences. "How these learning differences are incorporated into teaching and how parents and teachers can be responsive to these differences is critical to a child's academic and social success." (Levine, 2002, p. 18).

He warned against using labels such as "learning disability", "ADHD", "behaviorally disordered", etc. The use of labels not only has the potential to psychologically harm the affected child, but it also attempts to fit children with learning disorders into a few categories and oversimplifies the issue of learning difficulties. Instead, he advocates using detailed descriptions or profiles of a student's strengths, weaknesses, affinities/interests, and learning styles in order to better understand the "whole" child and how his or her brain is "wired" to learn. These descriptions, dubbed "neurodevelopmental profiles", examine a series of eight major neurodevelopmental functions of the brain that, according to Levine, are needed for the mastery of academic skills.

Dr. Levine spent the majority of his presentation discussing and explaining the eight neurodevelopmental functions which impact learning. The functions are: attention; temporal-sequential ordering; spatial ordering; memory (short term, long term and active working memory); language (receptive and expressive); neuromotor functions (fine motor, gross motor and grapho-motor functions); social cognition (verbal pragmatics and social behaviors); and higher order cognition. If a particular neurodevelopmental function is a weakness for an individual, it will likely interfere with the performance of tasks that require that function.

For instance, an individual whose brain wiring causes a weakness in attention may struggle with maintaining focus on a task, producing consistent work or effort, or being able to concentrate on appropriate detail and think ahead. He may also have great difficulty with something called "saliency determination". Saliency determination is the ability to decide whether or not a given piece of information is important and, if so, to what extent it is important. In Middle and High School, teachers depend upon their students to be able to determine the relative importance of information. Those who have weaknesses in this area will have tremendous difficulty deciding which pieces of information are important. They will therefore become exhausted as they try to learn and remember every little thing presented from a lecture or textbook, or focus on the wrong pieces of information and spend their time and effort learning and remembering the wrong things. Such a weakness is likely to go on and negatively impact other neurodevelopmental functions such as memory and language. (If one cannot attend efficiently to the relevant information, he will neither be able to remember it, nor to speak or write about it extensively).

An individual's neurodevelopmental profile is dynamic: success in fourth grade does not directly translate into success as a 23 year old. Similarly, just because a youngster is struggling with academic demands in primary school, does not mean that he will not find an appropriate career and flourish at it. In fact, traditional schooling asks students to be "well rounded" and good at everything from writing to math to science to foreign language. Those students who excel in only one particular area (whether it be computers, art, or even social communication skills) are often labeled "poor students", "underachievers" or worse because they do not excel in all areas. However, in the adult world, professionals are usually required to be specialists/experts in a particular area.

Levine warns that the early specialization of mind that some children have should not be criticized or shunned. While their weaknesses must certainly be addressed, it is vital to continue to strengthen their strengths so as to prevent atrophy. One's strengths, rather than her weaknesses, are what really count. These specialized (expert-like) strengths will be incredibly valuable later on.

Levine ended his presentation by explaining three of the important strategies he recommends that teachers use to help those who are struggling in school overcome their academic difficulties, and most importantly, to recover their sense of self-confidence and hope for the future. These strategies include: demystification; accommodations/bypass strategies; and the strengthening of strengths.

Demystification

Demystification involves talking with the child to help him understand his own learning strengths and weakness and see the relationship between his weaknesses and the problems he is having in school. Again, rather than simply being labeled, the child is given concrete information about his strengths and weaknesses and becomes empowered to work hard to overcome his weaknesses. "To tell a child he has LD or something like that- to give him a mere label-in no way empowers him to do something about it. But to talk to the child about his active working memory and short tem memory deficiencies as well as his strengths, really allows him to feel that his problems have borders around them and that he has some assets that he can invest in helping himself. It makes him feel more optimistic and more in control" (Levine, 2002, p.22 )

Accommodations/Bypass Strategies

Accommodations help a student work around learning problems to enable her to accomplish a specific task. For instance, allowing a child extra time to complete a test, giving a student a graphic organizer to use prior to essay writing, or allowing a child to use a computer instead of having to write by hand can enhance an individual's sense of success. These strategies make tasks that, because of brain wiring, were "impossible" for the child in the past, possible.

Strengthening of Strengths

Because teachers and parents are so keen to help children overcome their weaknesses, they sometimes tend forget the importance of appreciating and cultivating children's strengths. "When a child has learning difficulties, pursing strength can help alleviate anxiety and prevent the onset of low self-esteem that often accompanies academic difficulties." (Levine, 2002, p. 104). It is therefore vital for the adults who work with the child to encourage and help develop his or her strengths. Not only will this help bolster self-esteem, but strengths can also be used to get around or "bypass" weaknesses.

All reports from the faculty who attended the conference were extremely positive. Teachers felt they really gained a better understanding of which brain functions are involved in various academic tasks, and more importantly, how to help children with neurodevelopmental weaknesses overcome their difficulties and feel a sense of success.

References

Levine, M. (2002). A Mind at a Time. New York: Simon & Schuster.