My school let me down.

I was a mostly average student as a kid. I often got high grades such as the "A's" I got in all of my science classes but I also frequently got low grades such as the "D" in geometry. Why was that? My teachers and parents said I needed to apply myself more. They said "I could do better!" But I tried and I could not do better. At the time I just thought I was not real smart. Now that I am 58 I know better.

What I am is a Visual Leaner which does not fit well in the verbal/auditory style I was taught with in my classrooms as a kid. Now I know that I learn by visual thinking and not by words. I remember things in images and not in words. I think in images. This makes me a right brain dominant person. What is that like?

VL's tend to like to doodle or draw pictures, even if they aren't very good. My mind always wandered in class and I drew pictures. VL's like to solve problems or puzzles and they often take longer than others to complete a task. They are not willing to try something until they can see how to do that in their mind. Thus they usually sit alone in a class and don't participate much. They just seem to know things but can't explain why or where they learned it. They can remember a building or place they visited even though it was only one visit. I can still draw a rough floor plan of every house I have lived in since I was 8, which is over 6 different plans. I remember almost everything I see and almost nothing of what I read or hear if it doesn't have pictures presented with it. I love to make a chart to explain difficult concepts as I remember those easily. I rememberd things in school by picturing it in some form. I would remember the page it was on or the photograph that was on the same topic. I needed movies and pictures to be part of my education but it was not presented very often. I did well at science because it was real and hands on. I often solve problems in an unusual way which is my way of compensating for my weak verbal skills. VL's are usually very creative and often don't fit the mold of society very well. Spelling is usually a challenge for VL's and I make a lot of mistakes without a spell checker. Our handwriting is usually slow and I do better with my word processor. My cursive writing is almost unreadable but I took drafting in high school and leaned to print. People say it is beautiful.

I have always been organizationally challenged and must make lists or have my Palm Pilot with me to remember anything. When I taught I remembered the kids faces for years but seldom knew their names. I had a seating chart with their photo on it so I know who they were. I also remembered the pictures they turned in even though I did not know their name.

As a teacher I picked Graphic Arts and Photography. I taught yearbook for 25 years. All of these were visual. These were areas where I was brilliant. I love to take photographs and was changed when I ran into Ansel Adams in a class taken as a young teacher. He and I thought a lot alike, but he was brilliant. I can't enjoy a vacation without taking pictures. I have taken over 2000 in the last two years. My wife who is a verbal person doesn't understand why I take them and just box them. It is the process of visualizing them that connects me to an experience and to a memory. This is why kids who are asked to make a presentation will remember it a lot longer than if they just answer test questions to show their skills.

Now I know that we MUST change the way we teach our kids. About 40% of the kids I know are Visual Learners. If we still try to line them up in rows and teach with the teacher at the front we will not reach these kids. These kids don't do well with phonics and must see how words work. Headsprouts.com is a wonderful tool for doing that. These kids do well working on real tasks and on solving problems rather than memorizing facts. They need to see the whole before they understand the part. They do well with hands on work which makes the computer ideal for them. They can touch and see their work. Computer work is very right brained. Maybe that is why teachers who love to talk and write facts don't want to change their teaching style to use technology.

I have 8 grand children and all but 1 is also a visual learner. My own kids were mostly visual learners who did not do well in high school but did great when they went to college. Maybe the SAT is not such a great measure of success after all as it is geared toward the verbal learners.

My obsession in my semi-retirement is to help other teachers and administrators see that kids have changed and help them learn how to reach them.The girl at the top of this article is typical of our kids. She is using her notebook computer while listening to music (VL's love music) on her iPod while her Palm Pilot lists her friends who are calling her on her cell phone. Our kids grow up in an image driven world and more and more of them will be skilled in visual thinking more than verbal. This is the MTV generation and our generation will not reach them with lectures. If we still try to reach them with verbal means we will fail! If we don't change our ways we will see a marked increase in behavior problems as these kids are bored. Many kids diagnosed with ADA are known to be visual, right brain dominant. The must interact with the wold around them in order to experience it. These kids like to learn on their own and we will see an increase in student enrollment in home schooling and independent studies as that allows them to do what they do best. Challenge the kids with a difficult problem and let them design their own way to solve it. Let them show their work in ways other than words. Teach your class in a variety of different ways to reach the verbal AND the visual kids.

Please feel free to click on the "comments" link below to add your feedback to this blog. Are you a visual thinker? Does any of this sound like you or your students?

Comments

[Tonie Ogimachi]

Great blog! I think it would much easier for teachers to do this with students than build websites! Thanks for sharing with us.

[david meeks]

I'm a 55 year old male, who suffered emotionally for years because I couldn't do math. After reading your experiences, I finally see it wasn't me, it was how the information was presented. All those years of feeling inferior, of being less than a "man" because numbers on paper didn't make sense.

I remember taking nuclear physics in the Navy. I diligently did the work, thought I understood it, then along came a test, and my first thought was, where have I been for the last six weeks? It was total Greek.
I remember laughing and putting the pencil down.

Anyway, sir, I'm on the search for the Holy Grail. That is, in this day and age, are there applied geometry instruction techniques that address a visual learner like myself? Could you point me in a direction? Something tells me that learning this (finally) is about a lot more than learning math.

Thanks for your time.