The world needs all kinds oj minds, Dr. Mel Levine tells us. What we arelearning about how our brains work gives educators guidance on how to...

Celebrate Strengths,A Conversation with Mel Levine

w hen Mt'/ Levine was a

youngster, he had

what he describes as

a "specialized mind."

That is, he excelled at

a Jew things, like language and social

awareness, and was not very good—more

like awfid—at a few others, like sports

and gross motor abilities. Today a pedia-

trician, an internationally known author,

and the cojounder of the nonprofit institute

All Kinds of Minds, Levine is dedicated lo

expanding our understanding oj differ-

ences in learning. He elaborates on the

ideas that he presented at ASCD's 2006

Annual Conference in this inteiMew with

Educational Leadership.

Marge Scherer

Why do you say that the most importantthing to know ahout a child is his orher strengths?

If we want to prepare kids for adult-hood, one of the most important thingswe can do is to celebrate theirstrengths, those assets with whichthey're going to find meaning in life andbe able to make contributions. For themost part, adults who are leadingworthy lives are doing so by mobilizingtheir strengths and affinities. What weshould seek is a consonance betweena student's education and his futurecareer.

You often use the word demystifywhen you talk ahout making studentsaware of their own strengths. Why isdemystifying kids important?

Us very hard for kids to work on some-thing if they don't even know what itscalled. Awareness is the flashlight tbathelps kids find their way to the switchthat turns on an ability. 1 can't empha-size enough how much kids need tounderstand wbat tbeir issues are. Ustitne to set aside labels^—LD, forexample—-and be more specific. Tbelabels are pessimistic. They don't takeinto consideration tbe most importanttbing about you: your strengths.

Are we horn with our strengths or dowe develop most of them?

Tbe status of a child's functioning in aparticular sktU can change a lot overtime. We don't want kids to think thattheir brains are etched in stone, thattheir present functioning representsfixed hardware. Things can changesignificantly. For example, many peoplewbo bad language difficulties in readingand spelling as children have wonderfullanguage abilities as adults. They builtup that language function over time.

There's so much resiliency in thebrain, so much plasticity On the otherhand, if a weakness isn't known about,if it becomes like a muscle that nevergets used, the weakness is going toworsen and resiliency will give way. Iargue strongly for having a handle onthe strengths and weaknesses of chil-dren and then stepping back to ask,What do they need to work on? And bytbe way, there's nothing wrong witbneglecting some weaknesses if we tbinktbey're not important.

Do schools emphasize correcting theweaknesses too much?

Far too mucb. Within any school you canalmost divide tbe student body intostudents wbo are well-rounded and tbose

8 t D U C A T l G N A L L F A D 1-RS HI P / S i ; P IHMIIE R 2 0 0 6

Nfurture Affinities

who have highly specialized minds. Weoften punish the ones who have highlyspecialized minds. I'm not saying thatkids ought to get out of anything.Everyone ought to be exposed to history;even if theyVe nol good at it. And every-body needs to become mathematically

literate, even if math is anathema to them.But we shouldn't be punishing studentsbecause of iheir weaknesses.

If I were the Czar of Education, iwould have a track in high school calledthe vv'ell-roundedness track. Bui 1 wouldalso have specialty tracks in which you

O DON JOHNSTON/JOHNSION IMiGESWORtBOOK

take all the required classes but only getgraded in two. In your areas of strength,we're going to push you hard becausewhat we really care about is makingsure thai your strengths are gettingstronger as you go through school Andwe're not going lo evaluate you on how

A S S O C I A I I O N F d R S O P F R V I S I O N A N D C U R R I C U L U M D E V E L O P M E N T

well you practice otherpeople's strengths.

You're a strong opponent ofretention in grade. Why isihat?

Holding a kid back in a gradeto punish him for the wayhes wired is about the mosthumiliating experience mostchildren can have.

1 saw a boy In my officerecetitly who had beeti heldback in 7th grade. When weevaluated Joseph, we foundthat he had sotne significantproblems with memory. Hecouldn't get anything onautomatic pilot: When hedid a math problem, itwould take him six or sevenseconds to remember how much 6 x 7is- In reading, he had to figure out eachtime how to decode words thai he hadseen repeatedly. So much effort wasgoing into decoding the individualwords thai there wasn't much left forunderstanding the whole paragraph.He had a wonderful scientific mind,but the memory demands kepiexceeding his capacity

How did you counsei him?

First of all, we told him that to getsomething in automatic memory, youhave to study it right before you go tosleep. Everything you study then getsthree or four instant replays after youfall asleep. And, although we certainlywanted him lo learn his math facts, wealso wanted him to become adept witha calculator so his lack of automaticrecall of math facts didn't stand in theway of learning algebra. We tried tob) pass a weakness at the same time westrengthened a skill.

By the way whai we did for Josephdidn't take one penny from the schoolsbudget. If we understood the specific

breakdowns in learning better, we'dsave a fortune on special education.

What ahout the costs of identifyingstudents' prohlems?

Right now we overrely on testing toidentify problems. There are so manyissues tbat affecl learning that are not onany test. We're trying to teach teachershow to recognize the phenomenainvolved in breakdowns rather thanshunting a kid off for testing.

Teachers can leam so much throughgood observation. It's knowing whatyou're looking for, knowing what thepossibilities are, knowing what toprescribe. You go to a dermatologistbecause he or she knows what all therashes look like. Teachers should knowwhat the 5th grade math rashes looklike or what the rashes that cause astudent to get a D in physics look like.

The more teachers hecome familiarwith ihe breakdowns, the more ob\iousthe treatments become.

Give me an example of how to identifythe 5th grade rashes in math.

To be successful at solving word prob-lems in 5th grade, you need factualmemory so you can remember howmueh 3 X 9 is. You need proceduralmemory so you can remember how todo multiplication. You need patternrecognition so you can look al a mathproblem and say, "I've seen that kind ofproblem before." You need spatialability because you do math best if youcan picture what's going on in theproblem. You need sentence compre-hension. You need to focus on smalldetails because math problems are fullof details, and if you're a big-picturekid, you could have trouble.

If you have a kid in your class who'sdoing miserably on word problems, youcan ask. Is it factual memor)'? Is it proce-dural menior)'? Is it pattern recognition?Is it sentence comprehension? You canpinpoint where the breakdowns occur.And no ones in a better position to dothis than a well-trained classroom teacher.

How do you train educators to do this?

We have a program called SchoolsAttuned, which is part of our nonprofit

1 0 E D U C A I I O N A L L E A D E R S M I P / S H P T U M B H R 2 0 0 6

institute, All Kinds of Minds. Teachersand principals spend a year studying thisapproach with some of our faculty Theyuse case studies and online resources toleam how to think about brain functionsin relation to leaming and how to demys-tify kids about their weaknesses andstrengthen their strengths.

A lot of our readers are familiar withHoward Gardner's theoty of multipleintelligences. There are differencesbetween the neurodevelopmental func-tions that you identify and his intelli-gences. For example, he identifiesmusic as an intelligence of its own,with its own perception and memoryJunctions. Do your theories conjlict?

If anything, our models complementeach other and certainly are not dia-metrically opposed. One difference isthat he is a psychologist and I'm aclinician. A clinicians model naturally

"Parents don't get to pick their child's

affinities. Affinities arrive on the scene

and you wonder where they came

from or where this kid came from.."

ideniifies where breakdowns are occur-ring. When Gardner talks about musicalintelligence, 1 can lalk about some ofthe brain functions—sequencing abilityand motor-rhythmic abilities—thatwould contribute to musical intelligence.Various neurodevetopmental functionsin a sense are the ingredients of each ofhis intelligences.

Mine is more of a splitters model andhe's a bit more of a lumper. We needboth models.

We have some articles in this issuesuggesting that hoys have strengths

that are neglected in the classroom. Inyour research, is there anything toindicate that boys have dijjerentneurodevelopmental strengths?

First of all, in any given case, all bels areoff. All the generalizations break downwhen you look at individuals.

On the other hand, a lot of the datashow that boys underperfomi in collegecompared with what their SATs suggestthey could achieve. And girls are over-achievers. They do better than theirtests predict. A lot of girls have troubletaking multiple-choice tests.

Levine's Neurodevelopmental ConstructsLevine profiles an individual's

strengths and weaknesses on the

basis of eight neurodevelopnnental

constructs. Below are a few of the

subskills included in each

construct.

Attention. Alertness, mental

effort, saliency determination,

focus maintenance, facilitation,

inhibition, pacing, self-monitoring.

Temporal Sequential Ordering. Sequential

perception and memory, time management.

Spatial Ordering. Spatial awareness and

perception, materials management.

Memory. Short-term, active, and long-term

memory; memory access and consolidation

Language. Phonological

processing, sentence comprehen-

sion, articulation and fluency,

semantic use, word retrieval,

verbal elaboration.

Neuromotor Functions.

Gross motor, fine motor, and

graphomotor functions.

Social Cognition. Communication,

conversational technique, humor

regulation, self-marketing, collaboration,

conflict resolution, political acumen.

Higher-Order Cognition. Concept formation,

critical thinking, creativity, problem solving,

reasoning, logical thinking, mental representation.

ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENr 11

The girls seem way ahead of the boysin elenientar)' school in languageprocessing. As school becomes increas-ingly verbal and linguistically dense, thegirls develop more of an advantage. Theboys have better spatial abilities, whichare useful in kindergarten and 1st gradehut become increasingly irrelevant tothe curriculum as you proceed throughschool. To a great extent, you can thrivewithout spatial abihties in school. Youcan't thrive without language abilities inschool.

Also, boys seem to learn throughdirect, hands-on activities and don't doas well sitting and listening because oftheir patterns of attention. Boys seem torelish experiential learning. Then again,that's a generalization; there are excep-tions on both sides.

Teachers often are mandated to teach aparticular curriculum and simultane-ously are urged to differentiate theirinstruction. How important is main-taining that balance between standard-izing and differentiating instruction,and on what side should teachers err?

I think they can balance these very well,but it's best to err on the side of beingcompassionate and humane. The key isto focus on the big ideas and conceptsof the curriculum lor all kids and differ-entiate how each child will gain accessto them and be evaluated.

Schools need to reexamine this wholeissue of coverage, which is bizarre inview of the fact that our hard drive isnow on our desk. So many of the kidswho are strtiggiing in school have goodideas and are good at critical thinking,but they may not be quite as good withtaking in and retaining infonnation.Assignments and tests ought to be moreflexible so that different kinds of mindscan be effective. We allow this tohappen al! the time in the adult world.

Is the high-stakes testing movement inopposition to what you are advocating?

My philosophy is kind of swimmingupstream but not entirely so becauseyou can still embrace what I'm talkingabout and foster accountability Weneed to have more than one way ofevaluating a child. If we arc going topreserve accountability, we're morallyobligated to make sure we really under-stand the kids who are struggling andthe reasons ior their struggles, and wehave to have some plans for helpingthem rather than punishing them.

We also have to be careful that we're

not punishing their teachers. If youhave a class of kids who really havedifficulties with learning, you shouldn'tbe subjected to punitive action if thosekids are not doing well on tests.

1 do think that testing is a necessaryevil. There have to be hard criteria forlooking at how someone is performing.But there should be more than one test,and a lest should not be given everyyear in every school. Standardized testsshould be scheduled randomly so thatteachers aren't teaching to the test.

1 2 i i D U C A T I O N A L Lli AD ERS H 1 P / S E I T EM BHR 2 0 0 6

That's one ofASCD's beliefs—that weshould Iwvc multiple kinds of assessments.

i totally concur. As a clinician, I can saythat what we know about differentpatterns of learning almost mandatesthat ihere be different patterns oftesting. It would be sad if we judged allgrownups according to the samecriteria. 1 live way out in the countryhere in North Carolina and when a kidis sick, I can help him because I'm apediatrician. When my tractors broken,my neighbors come and fix the tractor. Iwould not want to be judged on mymechanical aptitude, and they shouldn'tbe judged on their medical expertise.

Recently Educational Leadershippublished two issues on educatingadolescents (The Adolescent Learner,April 2005; and Teaching the Tweens,April 2006). What is important foreducators to know about how iheadolescent brain works?

We're learning a lot about brain func-tion in adolescents and, in particular,the development of the frontal lobes ofthe brain behind your forehead. One ofthe characteristics of the frontal lobes isthat as you mature, they work slowerand slower so that you become a morethoughtful, reflective person rather thanan impulsive or impetuous one. Andthat's what starts taking place in thestudent's brain in high schoo!.

So one thing 1 would ask high schoolteachers is. How can you justify popquizzes and timed SATs? A teenagershould be given extra credit for takingmore time on a test.

1 would give kids space limits, nottime limits. So you say to a student,"You can take as long as you want towrite this essay but you're only allowedto write two pages." That's how theadult world works. When you have anarticle to write for Educational Leader-

ship, your editor doesn't care how longyou spent writing the article. That's your

problem—if you want lo stay up allnight or whatever. But you're going tobe given 18 Inches of space.

You said something that, as an editor, 1really liked: "Wnting is the largestorchestra a kid's mind has to conduct."

Right, because writing combines somany different brain functions:language, memory, motor function, theability to generate ideas, the ability to

thoughts. His language is Rowing buthis handwriting's hard to read and it'staking too much work. And he justcompletely breaks down. His teachersaccuse him of being a slacker when, inreality, the written output is too much ofa struggle for him. He's wonderful in aclass discussion. But what he gets downon paper sounds like tbe output of achild three or four years younger. Andso he stands accused of not reallytrying.

"One of the ways we can leverageskills is by continually peggingthem to a child's affinities."

understand and apply rules, the abilityto organize. You can make a long list ofihe different functions that have to Howtogether on paper.

That's why kids shouldn't perceivewriting as an emergency procedure.Ernest Hemingway once said, "Writingis rewriting." 1 just spent the wholemorning improving two chapters of mynew book, 1 couidn'i do that impul-sively. I had to slow down and, para-graph by paragraph, work it over. A lotof time, kids perceive writing as a crisis.It shouldn't be speed writing. It shouldbe thoughtful writing.

And speaking of the adolescent mmd,writing is especially challengingbetween the ages of 11 and 14.

Why is that?

Because tbose are ages where thewriting demands increase. If kids have aweakness in one of those areas 1 justmentioned, they can develop outputfailure and give up on themselves. Forexample, you might see a child whosefingers have a motor dysfunction. Hisfingers can't move as quickly as his

Schools are much more compas-sionate when it comes to children withreading problems than they are when itcomes to helping kids with outpuiproblems.

Can you give me an example of how ateacher can uncover a hidden asset andenable students to work on a particuhifweakness?

Let me give you two examples.A math teacfier sees a girl in her

class who is struggling with math^shejust doesn't have the concepts andtakes a long lime to solve problems.But the teacher has found out that thisgirl is a whiz at summarizing storiesshe's read and enriching a class discus-sion. That math teacher realizes thatthis is a student who's going to have touse her expressive language abilities tolearn math. In a sense, she's not goingto understand math until sbe teaches itto someone else.

And so the girl gets a tape recorder.Every time she learns a math concept,she goes home and dictates an explana-tion uf it. She recasts math in her own

A S S O C I A T I O N S L I P E R V I S I O N A N D C U R R I C U L U M D E V E L O I ' M L N T 13

language in order to concep-tualize il. She leams to useher strong expressivelanguage abilities to leverageher u'eak mathematicalabilities.

Here's another example,A content afftnity is an areaof content toward which achild is drawn for someobscure reason, A particularkid loves cars. Someone elseis into sports statistics.Another child loves fashion.It is so important to identifythese content affinities.When 1 was a little boy, Iloved animals. No one else inmy family had anything iikemy affinity for animal life.Now 1 live on a huge farm inNorth Carolina, surroundedby animal life. As I look outthe window while we speak.I ste my donkeys, my geese, my pheas-anis, my peacocks, six dogs, eightcats—it's way oul ol control. Butanimals were always my affinity.

Vm the one in my family who likesanimals, too.

Its called biophilia—a strong attach-ment to animals. It's irrational, but forthose of us who have it, it's powerful.Friends of mine who come to our farmjust look at me, and say, "Why aren'tyou playing golP" 1 can't play golf-1can't hit the ball. That's part of it. Butihe other part is I'd much rather bedoing chores on my farm.

What if a student says to you, "I don'tha\e any affinities"?

We hear that all the time. And ourresponse is, "You'd better go find them,"It's an emergency Often students dohave affinities but people close to themdon't see clearly what the child is drawnto. You know, this kid has always been

intrigued with fast-moving objects orthis child just loves the outdoors. Youtry to find, first of all, the broadestpossible theme and then iocus on themotifs. What keeps coming back in thischild's life? What are her inclinations?

By the way, parents don't get to pickthe affinities. Affinities just arrive on thescene and you wonder where they camefrom or where this kid came from.

How does a teacher use students' affini-ties to teach skills?

It's been shov/n that the best way tolearn how to read well is to read aboutsomething you know a lot about andleel passionate about. One ofthe wayswe can leverage skills is by continuallypegging them to a child's affinities.

If I were the principal of a school, 1would establish a policy that every 4thgrader picks a topic he's going to stickv ith. And at the end of three years, ihestudent makes a series of formal presen-tations. In the meantime, he reads everybook in the library on spiders, and he

does three art projects and lour scienceprojects on spiders. When the familygoes on vacation, they photographspider webs. And at school when there'sa spider in the boys' restroom, he'scalled in for a consultation.

An awful lot of important skills cannde the coattails of your affinities. If youcombine affinities v/ith strengths, youhegin to carve out a potential career.

So you find your affinities in yourrecreation, and you use your strengthsin your career?

Exactly There are all kinds of inter-esting questions that arise about theways you use your affinities andstrengths—whether, in fact, you wantthem to be part of making a living orsome kind ot a side dish. But at leastyou can address those questions.

Are affinities brain-based?

To some extent they're cultural, envi-ronmental, and family-influenced. But

14 E D U C A T I O N A L LEADifRSHiP/SEPTEMBEK 2 0 0 6

"We want kids to work on their

weaknesses at the same time they're

striving to build their strengths."

to some extent, they seem to be inbornin kids ratber than acquired- And, asparents know, you can have three chil-dren in your family whose interests aretotally diverse. Same parents, sameeverything else.

We have often puhlished articles andtheme issues on hrain-hased learning.Would you address the extent to whicheducators should relate what we'relearning ahout the hrain to theirinstructional practice?

We have to be somewhat cautious notto overapply wbat we're leaming frommedical and scientific researcb—not tooveruse it or think of it as particularlymiraculous. However, I think it wouldbe a big mistake for educators to turntheir backs on what we're learningabout leaming. I favor a middleground in wbich we're not going tobecome zealots for just any kmd ofstrategy that stakes a claim in brain-based researcb. Instead we should ask.What can we extract for practice from

what we are learning about the brain?Wbat has direct implications, first ofall, for teaching all kids, and second,for understanding differences amongthem and responding to those differ-ences? Tbe science ofleamingshouldn't be thougbt of as tbe salvationof edtication, but it can be helpful.One of the main goals of education ishelping kids over time figure out whothey are. [3

Mel Levine, M.D., is Professor of Pedi-atrics at the University of North CarolinaMedical School and the cofounder of AllKinds of Minds. He is the author ofseveral books including A Mind at aTime; The Myth of Laziness; and. mostrecently, Ready or Not. Here Ufe Comes(Simon & Schuster, 2005); www.allkindsofminds.org. Marge Scherer is Editor inChief of Educational Leadership;mscherer@ascd,org.

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