Learning Styles

Good morning!  Depending on where you are in the world, of course.

Today I want to talk about different learning styles as I understand them.  I’m by no means an expert, but I have raised three children (two who are now teachers), and I’ve worked with middle school children for the best part of eleven years.  That being said, think I know a little bit about how kids learn, and I recently know more about how I learn.

As learning styles go, there are three that are considered to be most typical.  Visual learning, kinesthetic learning, and auditory learning.  Visual learning can include pictures, charts, and maps.  The visual learner usually has a good visualization skills (obviously not my strong suit).  Kinesthetic, or tactile learning uses physical activity including using muscles and sensation.  Finally, auditory learning depends on hearing, speaking, singing, etc.

Obviously, if you are blind, your learning style probably isn’t visual, as is the case with me because of Aphantasia.  I used to think that I was a visual learner, because I needed to see something over and over again in order to learn how to do it.  In my young adult life, I used to get very frustrated when learning a new job.  I would carefully watch how something was done, and I knew that eventually I’d be good at it, but I feared that my employer (or potential employer) might think I was incapable.   In hindsight, I believe that I was using a combination of kinesthetic and auditory learning styles.  Had I known that at the time, I believe I would have made a written list of steps, or repeated instructions back in order to more quickly learn the task at hand.

One instance of kinesthetic learning that comes to mind for me is when I was in third grade studying cursive writing (yeah, I’m that old), I would get very anxious.  I used to have a recurring nightmare that I was assigned to write the first, middle, and last names of all five people in my family of origin within a short period of time.  If I did not complete said assignment, my family was in danger.  I know now that others could visualize to to write after seeing the example letters on a page, whereas I could not.  In order to accomplish decent cursive writing, I began, somewhat obsessively, drawing letters in the air with my fingers.  This habit drove my mother crazy, but I learned how to write.

When was in eighth grade I took typing; I think people would call it keyboarding these days.  In the mid to late 70s, our typewriters weren’t even electric, and we didn’t have word processing to auto-correct for spelling, etc.  If you made mistakes, your paper could end up looking very messy from using Whiteout and trying to re-type over it, or even trying to write in the letter.  My amazing typing teacher, Mrs. Ingle, was therefore very strict about learning to type without looking at the keys, and learning to be as accurate as possible.  If you are a visual learner, imagine having no picture in your mind at all to remember where the keys were.

Again, I had to figure out a way to remember where the keys on a typewriter were without being able to visualize.  I imagine that the process is somewhat similar for people who are blind physically.  I used the tactile sense of my fingers tapped on a table or even against my legs as I was standing in order to train myself how to type well.  I still have the habit of “typing” against my legs, and catch myself “typing” words or phrases that I or someone else have just spoken.  Consequently, I never lost my ability to type about 60 words per minute, even when I was not using a typewriter or keyboard for many years (you know, back before home computers).

Auditory learning is something I utilize on a regular basis as well.  Songs for learning, such as the popular Schoolhouse Rock series from the 70s helped me to learn multiplication tables, grammar, and American history.  Other songs have helped me learn to speak Spanish.  I even taught my children a song to help them learn the “helping verbs” which I still remember from sixth grade.

It is truly fascinating to me how our brains can achieve the same outcome using a variety of different skills, even when some of us are missing certain abilities.  It is my hope that we can learn from each other, and use that knowledge to educate future generations in what works for each individual.

Have a great day!

Suzanne