This all came about as my
survival strategy to cope with homeschooling.
Two years into homeschooling, I was reading rote discussion questions to
my oldest son and he was not “finding” the answers from the short text he had
just read independently. My response was
for him to read it aloud to me so I could emphasize the answer as I read it
with him. Even with my exaggeration he
was not “getting it.” I was
baffled. Then it hit me: I had not
taught him reading comprehension strategies that I used automatically. I was the teacher! Learning is not an innate ability that just
materializes! Even in writing this, it
seems silly that I did not put two and two together sooner. But I am a self-taught learner so I didn’t
understand why he didn’t teach himself what he needed to know. Isn’t this what most employers want in an
employee? It had been my survival technique for all my job placements. I then began to unravel how or why I am a self-taught
learner so that I could teach my kids to teach themselves. I have loved every minute of learning the
best from the best.
It
wasn’t until I started teaching my only daughter, the third child, how to read
that I really internalized someone’s struggle to learn and the feeling of
self-defeat. The basic skills of reading
(of which I had no clue) that my boys seemed to grasp without difficulty were
just not coming together for my daughter.
I also knew that she has always had ear issues. I scheduled an ENT appointment and over time
I summarized that her hearing was unreliable due to changes in fluid. At the time of her wanting to read, most of
the time she could hear, but because of so many issues, she did not trust her
ability to hear. So I did what I do
best to fix "it:" I started researching.
I
love the public library: free education from access to the state’s database of
books all at my fingertips! And, I have
a great librarian, Ms. Sue, whom works with me in processing all of my
requests. I started with what I know:
Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences model (bluewafflebreakie.wordpress.com) and then I let the website search
engine guide me to new book discoveries that spun off of that topic. I spent hours every night when the kids were
sleeping pouring over books from the 1950s through to this decade amassing a
huge repertoire of knowledge long forgotten.
I ingested scientific studies, college course load texts (taken from
online syllabuses), training manuals, psychological cases, vocational
methodology (an interest from my previous career), and online websites. My initial goal was to find compensatory
strategies to assist my daughter in whatever disability I was sure she had due
to her learning issues. I became so
focused on self diagnosing her so that I could find a curriculum that would
teach her to learn to read. Then, I
became so discouraged that I didn’t even want to teach her for fear of making
“it” worse.
About
that time of year, I went to the annual homeschooling convention (a home school
mom’s mini-vacation resort destination) and listened to the speaker Candace
H., a neuro-developmentalist (Liberty Consultants). Previously,
I had started reading about brain based learning practices so my pump was
primed for her methodologies. What she
said startled me: any learning issue is an issue of disorganization. Her CT
based business specializes in finding where the brain has detoured or stopped
progressing through the developmental processes and then they rewire it with
structured activities so that it becomes organized. That took me a while to digest. I had focused my research on compensating,
not correcting.
I
began my process for working through things: staring at the trees and walking
the gardens in my yard. Over a period of
a year, the connections were forming in my mind on how it all goes together to impact
a person’s learning, from preferences to processes. I began to study more intensely memory and
where each process was occurring in the brain. I will be doing more research on my theory that if you feed the brain region
with the nutrients it needs to optimize the learning experience, then you will
be doing less work more effectively. No
longer was this self directed project about learning and applying compensatory
strategies to correct or bypass issues, it emerged to form a big picture with
details on how to learn effectively and efficiently in any domain. Without realizing it, my journey had followed
what I have found to be the best “map” for learning! Somewhere along the way, I had subconsciously
assimilated and taught myself to learn how to learn. My one caveat I have found, however, is that
I am deficient in retrieving information from my memory. Therefore, my
hesitancy to share this journey was stifled by my inadequacy to share
confidently my research due to the embarrassment of not being able to remember
the details. I am, by the way, a thirty
five year old self discovered dyslexic!
The
progression of this blog is intended to mirror how to learn. I will include all of my research and given
credit to every author along the way because this information is not new. I’ve used my dyslexic insight and material
reasoning to connect and organize it in a manner that maximizes learning
anything. The first section will give the big picture. I
will preload key words and topics and then end the section with a fine detail
script. The second section will focus on what I have found to be the foundation for all learning. I
will discuss the sub-skills and the developmental process for mastery of each
skill. Neuroscience will highlight the
nutrition and brain regions. The third
section will focus on the tool needed for effectiveness, or
automaticity. Here I will describe and
provide strategies for the disorganized brain.
Lastly, a detailed, visual outline will show how to increase efficiency. In
other words: learn comfortably, easily, and quickly from the best, for the
best.