Chapter 13, MI

Summary:
Chapter thirteen explains three different ways of incorporating MI theory into one’s classroom. The three ways they describe here are through technology, cultural diversity, and career counseling. There is a table in the chapter which gives several examples for each of the intelligences on how to use technology to teach these students. For instance, a few forms of software one may use for an intrapersonal learner are “Oregon Trail, Emotional IQ Tests, “Myst,” or career counseling software. Which brings me into another part of the chapter, career counseling. What is it? Career counseling is a way of incorporating a student’s interests, talents and experiences into a suggested career field. For instance, when I took mine, my test scores resulted in future careers as a taxi cab driver, politician, school teacher or book writer. The third point in this chapter is on Cultural Diversity. America is known as a boiling pot of culture, being founded entirely my immigrants. By Native Americans who crossed the Bering Strait, the English who settled from across the Atlantic and the Spanish who did the same. Then came the industrial revolution and many others came to America in search of their fortunes in the “land of the free”. So, America’s population is comprised entirely of non-natives. This breeds diversity from all of the different cultures that make up this nation. It also begs the question, “How are teachers going to deal with such diversity?” This chapter says we should begin by getting to know our students personally, and educating the class in the diversity of the people around them.

Reflection:
There was one part of this chapter our group did not wholly agree on and that was the importance of career counseling. I did not agree with its approach while my fellow teammates did. It was a rather strange situation. My experience with it had been less than helpful, while most of their's had been beneficial. I'm uncertain if it is because the others were given a different approach to the subject or if it just didn't fit my personality. In any case we were at odds here. Throughout the rest of the chapter though it was quite unanimous for all of us. We all agreed on the idea of using technology which fit the different intelligences, but just not the suggested technologies they used int he book and we all agreed on understanding all of the student's backgrounds and considering how best to incorporate their diversity in the classroom.