Let Me Learn International

I realised how my learning patterns differ to my wife’s, who is high in Confluence, when it comes to roles in the home. I take care of all the accounts and home maintenance whilst my wife comes up with wonderful ideas e.g. about how to improve and decorate our home. I am looking forward to understanding my children’s scores too.

I was able to understand better my work relationships with other members of the Senior Management Team. For many years I worked with a Head who had a high score in Confluence: he would come up with some of the ideas and I would organise and implement them!

I realised at once that LML matches very closely to the main objectives of Science teaching. Science methodology, in fact encourages the inclusion of Sequential, Precise, Technical and Confluent in each “lesson… The LML process gives the teacher the tools to attain the objectives of Inquiry Based Learning.

I was introduced to the four learning patterns and I immediately began to comprehend myself better as a person and as a learner. I understood the reasons for my avoidance of situations where Technical Reasoning is required and somehow it was an enormous relief to learn that there was nothing particularly wrong with me for feeling this way.

I became aware of possible reasons underlying learner difficulties such as the learner who does not score high in Sequence and is required to put ideas in the right order in writing a narrative; or the learner who has high Precision and has to wait for the end of the process in order to get feedback from the teacher.

When a teacher used to assign me a composition, I always wanted it to be different than the others' and original. Now I can understand that I'm not selfish but rather Confluent.

I felt proud seeing them showing excitement when our lesson together was due.

The Let Me Learn experience has helped me a great deal in my personal life, and the way I deal with others. First and foremost, it has shed a light upon my personality, making me realise that I am such a perfectionist and I expect so much out of myself, not because there is something wrong with me, as I often thought, but that its mainly due to my learning patterns.

Thanks to Let Me Learn, I have learnt to tether my precision and sequential instincts and stretch my technical one… In fact, I am less scared at experimenting on computer, and I am also considering takings up an ECDL course this Summer.

My teaching has definitely improved thanks to the Let Me Learn experience. I realised that I was not catering enough for those students who are high in Technical or Confluent patterns, but on the other hand, being high in Sequence and Precision myself, I was giving a lot more importance to these two patterns.

I am trying my best to try and reach all four patterns. I am aware though, that our education system itself favours Sequence and Precision over Technical Reasoning and Confluence.

Something which I found so effective and helpful, and which I definitely plan on using year in year out is the use of the LML soft toys. The kids took a liking to them as soon as they saw them. Between one lesson and another, we always discuss which puppet should come out next. In fact, I also have girls in charge of taking them in and out of their special place, and the kids simply love it.

This has been an enriching experience since, looking back on it, I realise how much it has helped me, both on a professional and personal level.

The most common approach that was used when I was at school was the one size fits all approach where the teacher did not adapted the syllabus according to the students in the class. When teaching with this approach many students will be left behind, especially those students who have different learning patterns from the teacher.

My highest learning patterns are Technical and Confluent. This means that I learn by doing and creating new things. The problem was that teachers used to cater for only one learning pattern to be able to finish the syllabus.

There were also times where I built a model or used illustrations to help me remember certain processes or facts. Another thing which really frustrated me when I was a student was that normally teachers guided us to do several tasks and we were never left alone to be creative.

The system as it was till the tertiary level left a negative impact on me but when I entered into Junior College and University I noticed that I was given more chance to express my ideas, invent and create things for several assignments that I was given.

Today I realized that the teacher must be the tool to reach all the students. I don’t wish that my present and past students that I am going to teach pass from the same negative experience that I passed during my school days.

The tasks that I give also vary. For example, sometimes I give essays as homework, where students that look for Precision will do well in them but sometimes students have to build a model or present a chart and they are assessed for creativity, research and the information given by them. When doing several activities and tasks to reach the different learning patterns I notice that all the students are interested in the lesson and all of them participate in class.

Now that I have some knowledge about the learning patterns I can better understand my approach in class. I tend to create a lot of simulating situations considering that economics is a social subject which needs to be understood through hands on applications. Thus students in class are organized in groups and do a production process or they are taken to the computer lab to surf the internet for some practical real life knowledge of the theory learnt in class.

I have now understood why once a student has complained that he needs chunks of paragraphs to read in order to understand. At the time I couldn’t understand why he was complaining about something which I perceived to be easier for them. Now I do – it’s different learning patterns.

With the insight that I gained with the LML course I feel I can be of better service to members of staff in supporting them by suggesting ways forging, intensifying or tethering their individual patterns to be able to cope with the different demands of their work. LML has also equipped me with knowledge of how to group members of staff (for specific tasks) for improved group dynamics and efficiency.

LML has equipped me with skills needed to make conscious efforts to esteem and to mentor different members of staff and students I relate with.

I am very eager to work upon the LML implementation as a whole school policy as the foundation for differentiated learning in my school.