NOT EVERYONE LEARNS ALIKE
How to teach in the ways people learn best.
Penny Zettler
July 1, 1987
I'm currently teaching the Pastor's Doctrine Class to our fifth and sixth graders. Since we have only a limited time, I've had to compress a few years of theological study into a few weeks of classes. The morning I was trying to cover the doctrine of the Trinity, I was particularly time conscious. Forty-five minutes for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit-it was laughable. So I launched into a lecture. A lecture was efficient, I figured, considering I needed to get across a lot of information in a short time. About five minutes into my inspired talk, however, one of the boys raised his hand and asked, "Can't we draw?" Draw! I thought. How can you ask to draw when there is so much to learn? Later I caught myself. Sometimes I forget that if I don't teach in such a way that the students actually learn something, I'm wasting my precious breath and their fidgety time. That boy has the soul of an artist. He didn't want to hear my carefully organized, beautifully delivered facts. He wanted to learn in the way God had made him. He had heard enough facts; now he wanted to put them into a drawing. He could appropriate the theology best by expressing himself on paper-his favorite and most effective way to learn. My little drawing friend and I are separated by more than height and years. We are probably wired differently. I thrive on personal interaction. In most of the classes I teach, I'm usually thinking of ways to get people to discuss the subject. (My fellow team teacher contends I get sweaty palms if the class isn't moving toward small-group discussion within the first twenty minutes.) But the young artist likes to draw. Discovering Our Differences
As I began thinking about the different ways people like to learn-and do seem to learn ...
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