Developing Reading Through Multiple Intelligences and Global Awareness

 Last night in a graduate course, I experimented with a "station" exercise I sometimes used in my high school classrooms. Drawing from Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences and a reading we did for this week, I created nine stations to reflect various learning styles: linguistic, mathematical/logical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, emotional, musical, environmental, etc. At each station were activities created to help pre-service teachers to think about tapping into the multiple ways students learn. In addition, the questions and activities revolved around John Dau's and Martha Akech's Lost Boy, Lost Girl text I selected for a model text.

I wrote the activities before I went to the store to buy items to accompany activities and, lo and behold, I found a puzzle of the globe which required space for students to piece together separate items while talking about global issues. Little did I know, however, that the puzzle actually created a miniature globe. It was way cool and viewing my graduate students completely involved with the task (all tasks actually) made me smile. They didn't want to move on to new stations because they became engrossed in each one.
 
I also found time-hardening clay so each student had a chance to sculpt a cow in the tradition of the Sudanese boys they read about. They also perused non-informational text to accompany their understanding of teaching students to read context for comprehending literature.

At the end of the night (2.5 hours) I pointed out that if they noticed, they learned a tremendous amount from each other and with having fun. I simply walked around the room and guided questions and thinking about teaching, reading, and how multiple intelligences should be tapped in a classroom. In other words, the evening was full of a lot of learning and I didn't have to lecture from a Powerpoint or have them take notes about what they needed to know. Instead, they moved the theory into practice - subversive if I say so myself. Their work reminded me of the phenomenal classroom, room 301, in Louisville, Kentucky - the community of Brown I will never forget.