Let's Talk About Race

In a recent newsletter from the Multiple Intelligences Network, Dr. Thomas Hoerr advises educators on the need for dialogue about race in schools. Read his thoughts on the importance of teaching the personal intelligences and developing social-emotional learning (SEL), including how to embrace diversity and encourage empathy.

The full article is reproduced here:

June 2020

Hello to MI Friends,

We are experiencing two pandemics. COVID-19 has changed our lives for months, inhibiting our actions and causing illness and death. And now a racial pandemic engulfs us. The Coronavirus is a relatively new phenomenon; it has been around less than a year and has spread exponentially for months. The racial virus, "a harmful or corrupting agency," is even more pernicious. Racism in this country goes back 400 years; the first slaves arrived in the USA in 1619, and the protests occurring today are the result of centuries of ignorance, discrimination, and injustice.

The encouraging news in the racial pandemic is that both blacks and whites are protesting against the racist status quo. An article in the June 16 New York Times notes, "As crowds have surged through American cities to protest the killing of George Floyd, one of the striking differences from years past has been the sheer number of white people" (p. A19). Let's hope that the outcries and protests aren't evanescent, and that they continue as a force on reconsidering not just policing, but the expectations, rules, and laws that govern our society.

Last month I wrote about COVID-19 and I talked about the importance of formally teaching the personal intelligences and developing social-emotional learning (SEL) in schools. That's still the case. Now our long overdue focus on diversity and equity further increases this need. We educators have an obligation to develop better people, not just stronger students, so we need to focus on teaching children how to manage their emotions, manage relationships, and solve interpersonal problems. That includes teaching them how to Embrace Diversity, one of my Formative Five success skills.

As a first step, in every school, regardless of its location, demographics, or history, there needs to be dialogue about race in society and race in schools, including your school. This won't be easy but it's essential. We cannot only focus on the 3 R's and raising test scores. Before the day when students arrive, faculty members must have talked about race, done a deep dive into their current practices and attitudes, and begun to plan to talk about how issues of race, privilege, and equity can be addressed in PD session and in classrooms with students. This is a big challenge! It cannot be done in three or six hours; I suggest beginning now by convening a book group and maybe adding a day of meetings when teachers return. A valuable resource to begin this faculty discussion might be to read Robin DiAngelo's book, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. If you're a school administrator, recognize that you cannot solve this problem alone. Consider a faculty Diversity Committee and a faculty leader as well: WhyYouNeedADiversityChampion. Another good resource is AvoidingRacialEquityDetours.

Finally, empathy must be at the center of our diversity efforts. We need to understand how others see and feel the world. Some of my thoughts on empathy were captured in a short video in early February at the Microsoft headquarters for their Teaching Happiness program: TomOnEmpathy.

Hang in there! Our efforts are even more important in these times of tumult. Enabling students to use MI to learn and developing their personal intelligences, their SEL. will position them for success in an ever-changing world.

Thanks for reading. I'd be pleased to hear from you!

TOM

Thomas R. Hoerr, PhD

thomasrhoerr.com

trhoerr@newcityschool.org

ASCD MI Network Facilitator

The Multiple Intelligences Network is a Professional Interest Community (PIC) sponsored by ASCD. It is facilitated by Dr. Thomas Hoerr - Emeritus Head of School of the New City School, St. Louis, Missouri.

Learning Survival Skills Using MI Theory

With schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers do their best to keep students engaged while learning online. This article from Telluride News describes how one educator in Colorado, USA has adapted her school’s survival skills unit using the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The unit is experiential and cross-curricular, encouraging students to use as many of their intelligences as possible with what she calls an  “Adventure Survival Passport.” 

Read the full article below to learn how the unit was inspired and what it entails.

TELLURIDE NEWS

April 29, 2020

Survivals skills with a twist: Fourth-graders participate in alternative survival skills project

By Bria Light 

In the life of a Telluride fourth-grader, this time of year would normally find students learning to dress cuts and care for wounds, check for obstructions of an injured person’s airway, and assess the situation for danger before helping someone with an injury, among other skills. This program, which provides an opportunity for students to receive their Basic Aid Training under the instruction of local EMTs, is almost a rite of passage for fourth-graders, who each receive their very own first aid kit upon completion of the unit.

The program, which has been instilling basic first aid skills in local fourth-graders for years, normally brings in local EMTs and other emergency personnel such as police officers, firefighters and ski patrollers to convey practical skills, as well as demonstrate the wide range of options in emergency care professions.

“It seems to be developmentally appropriate to teach these survival skills at the fourth-grade level for a few reasons,” said Lisa Andrews, a local EMT who has been helping with the program for the past eight years. “Kids, especially local kids, are beginning to venture a bit farther from home and parents, and this course arms them with information and hands-on practice so that they know what to do if a problem arises. With basic skills of how to care for themselves and their pals, they are a bit safer when they head out on bikes, skis or hiking.”

This year, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing schools to transition to online learning platforms, things are different. Local EMTs and emergency personnel cannot come into the school in person and set up the usual five stations to teach aid skills, nor can students tour an ambulance. Nonetheless, local EMTs already had the first aid kits stocked and ready to give to each student, and fourth-grade teacher Sue Herir, who heads this year’s survival skills unit, did not want students to miss out on the tradition due to the pandemic.

“Fourth grade is typically such a great grade because they go on all these field trips and do all these interactive projects, and it’s become known that fourth grade is when you get your first aid kit,” Herir said. “So even though they won’t get to do the paramedic piece of it, I didn’t feel like these kids should miss out on it.”

Instead, she devised an alternative plan for students to get creative and learn about survival skills, using the format of an “adventure survival passport.” Each student must complete a reading, writing and math challenge related to survival skills or stories, and may then choose from optional tasks such as creating a backpacking checklist, making a list of edible and inedible foods found in their local environment, and creating a video lesson to teach the class a survival skill like fire-building or knot-tying. For the math component of the unit, students incorporate hands-on STEM skills by building a survival shelter for Ravioli, the fourth-grade math teacher’s dog.

“We wanted to incorporate a lot of cross-curricular activities, tying in science, Spanish, writing and other subjects,” said Herir, while also adding in fun options like creating a game of survival or writing a song based on the theme.

“I always love trying to include all the multiple intelligences, giving kids the opportunity to bring in their interests in music, or movement, or dance, or whatever,” she said of the process of creating the survival skills passport project. “This project gave me license to be able to give kids those options.”

For Andrews’ part, though the kids won’t be able to meet with emergency medical professionals this year, she and other EMTs are happy to be able “to continue the practice of giving each kid a very cool first aid kit upon completion of the course.”

“We have been told that kids like the first aid kits and many keep them for years, replenishing the supplies and supplementing them as well,” Andrews said. 

With so much time out of the classroom and on the computer screen, teachers and students alike have had to adapt quickly to new ways of learning. So if you spot a kid outside in the woods building a dog-sized survival structure, rest assured that they are likely just doing their homework.

The Two Facets of Joel Kupperman (1936-2020)

By Howard Gardner

We were having breakfast at the kitchen table and my wife Ellen said “This obituary in the New York Times will interest you.” Indeed, it did!

Ellen had not heard of Joel Kupperman (age 83, died on April 8, 2020, in an assisted living facility in Brooklyn, probably of COVID19). But I immediately recognized his name and remembered some biographical facts.

When I was young, a much discussed show—first on radio, then on television—was “The Quiz Kids.” Every week, a panel of children heard a series of short answer questions and the kids competed to answer first and answer correctly. Joel was one of the indisputable stars—his hands shot up quickly, his answers most often correct. And so—at least for those of us who thought of ourselves as ‘brains’—this was a mark of distinction: one that easily competed with the accolades for baseball players like Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays, or with matinee idols like John Wayne or Doris Day.

As related in various books and articles (and in a famous movie Quiz Show), life after this form of youthful celebrity was not easy. For response-whiz Joel Kupperman, it was particularly challenging and painful—so much so that if the “Quiz Kids” program was even mentioned in conversation, he would leave the room. And he forbade discussion of his own childhood with his children and even, apparently, blocked out many of its details.

Post his “minutes of fame,” Kupperman went to the University of Chicago at age 16, where he was apparently bullied. He subsequently received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Cambridge and taught philosophy for fifty years at the University of Connecticut. In 1964 he married an historian Karen Ordahl (Kupperman), who teaches at New York University. His wife and two children (son Michael and daughter Charlie) survive him.

But what piqued Ellen and my interest were two portions of the obituary—both of which happen to connect to my own preoccupations and my own research over the decades. One was Kupperman’s views of intellect:  “There’s this weird notion that intelligence is a single thing, but people can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.” I have no idea whether Kupperman knew about work on different kinds of intelligence—including the “theory of multiple intelligences”—but he certainly grasped the concept.

The second strand was Kupperman’s area of philosophical inquiry—ethics. Two individuals interviewed for the obituary convey Kupperman’s personal perspective:

Duke university philosopher David Wong: “Joel’s work assists us in our individual and collective endeavors to live a good life by articulation of much good advice and well-taken cautions.”

Daughter Charlie: “He started out writing about pure ethics, but as his career went on, he was trying to understand character, and why it’s so hard for people to be good… he talked a lot about the meaning of life and how to be a good person and what happens after you die. I remember him telling me that when you die, it like unplugging a radio. There’s a glow that remains.”

Though we did not know each other, and our lives took quite different courses, it fascinates me that Joel’s life encompassed two issues that have come to dominate my own thinking for decades:  the multiplicity of intelligences and the search for a good life.  Recently, I have sought to tie these lines of work together in this blog post.

Discovering and Nurturing MI in Iran

Introduction by Howard Gardner

Because the idea of multiple intelligences has spread widely over the decades, it's always especially exciting when I receive correspondence from a region with which I had not previously been in touch.

Recently I have been in correspondence with Sina Aminnia and Milad Sarabi, who are co-founders of NIKA, an institute in Iran which seeks to assess the talents of  young persons. Currently, their team contains about 20 expert members in different fields of psychology, art, music, sport, engineering, biology, and other areas that presumably span multiple intelligences. In the blog that posted here, they describe games, puzzles, and other challenges which they use to gain an impression of which areas are of interest to students and in which ones they are able to demonstrate skill or promise.

We are all aware that in today's world, it's all too easy for political leaders to demonize other nations, often for their own political gain. It's reassurring and encouraging that those of us who are involved in education and in psychology can continue to communicate and to have interchanges of ideas and instrument—below the radar screen of public announcements. The Iranian and Persian people have a long and distinguished history, dating back many centuries—I look forward to the time when our countries, and other nations, can cooperate as well on issues that are important for the entire planet.

_____________________________________________

Guest Post by NIKA

NIKA Institute of Talent Selection and Training Multiple Intelligences 

The general goal of NIKA is to find out each students’ special or most well-documented abilities and train their intellectual capabilities according to their differences individually. 

Our institute is divided into two departments: 1. talent selection and 2. training intellectual capabilities. 

In the first department, each student will be assessed by how she/he acts in challenges in a game format, which has been found to be unfamiliar to the student. Expert teachers in each one of the specific fields of MI and expert psychologists who know all the facets of every intelligence, assess students through 8 different workshops relevant to 8 different intelligences by the standard of Gardner’s Theory which recommends monitoring students individually. 

It should be mentioned, according to the cultural and religious limitations caused by the government (Islamic Republic of Iran), existential intelligence is not allowed to be assessed; therefore, this one is not in the category of assessment. 

At the end of the process that lasts about 14 months, an intelligence profile will be presented to each student. Definitely, at NIKA, we’re not in search of dividing students due to their superior intelligences and avoid labeling them. However, the whole process helps the families to decide knowledgeably, manage their and their children’s time and expenses, and to guide them through a future path according to their documented abilities. 

In the second department, the students are educated/nurtured according to their intelligence profile. We focus on the fields of intelligences which are the top-rated ones for each student. For example, if a student is more talented in musical, mathematical and spatial intelligences, we teach him/her all the different fields of these three. The workshops are still in a practical mode but take an educational approach. Also, NIKA tries to inform the students with respect to different jobs that might be appropriate. 

It should be noticed that in the educational system of Iran, there isn't any core course or even a significant workshop about job positions, and most people even after entering universities, have only a vague vision about their future career. According to the reliability and the importance of monitoring the activities instead of Self-Tests, some challenges–in no particular order– among 240 challenges, are briefly explained below. 

1. Challenge Name: The Magic Box 

   Relevant Intelligences: Visual-Spatial 

   Items for assessment: Imagination, attention to detail, generalization, ideation, identifying tactile sensation, ability in 3D designing, identifying parts of an object 

   Explanation: Various objects in terms of material and size are placed into a big box. The student should touch the objects with closed eyes. Then she/he should paint a picture of what has been touched in the best style. 

2. Challenge Name: The Painting of Sounds 

   Relevant Intelligences: Musical, Visual-Spatial and Bodily-Kinesthetic 

   Items for assessment: Imagination, ability to design based on hearing, the interaction between hearing and faculty, ideation, interest in music, motion 

   Explanation: The students listen to different theme sounds like rain, crowds of people in a street, etc. with closed eyes. Then they should paint according to those sounds. 

3. Challenge Name: Office Simulation 

   Relevant Intelligences: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Linguistic-Verbal 

   Items for assessment: Identifying motivation and tendency, the capability of verbal and nonverbal communication, effective communication with others, considering other perspectives of a situation, the ability to settle an argument in a group, respecting different opinions, being a good listener 

   Explanation: Students select their favorite job at a session before this challenge so that the class would be designed and decorated according to the jobs in separate sections. During this challenge, the students position themselves in the relevant parts and play the role of someone who has that specific job. Therefore, everyone should answer their clients’ or customers’ requirements. For instance, the teacher and psychologist start a fake quarrel and the student who acts as a police officer, should settle the argument in the best way, and according to the above items. 

4. Challenge Name: Dominoes 

   Relevant Intelligences: Bodily-Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal and Visual-Spatial 

   Items for assessment: Hand-eye coordination, precision, tendency and ability to do delicate tasks

   Explanation: This game can be played individually or as a group activity. The goals of this challenge are to determine how the dominoes are arranged, the size of the final configuration and implementing creativity to form various settings.

MI Outside the Classroom During COVID-19

In this article from Psychology Today, Darcia Narvaez—professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, describes some abilities that may be developed better outside traditional classrooms. While so many schools around the world remain closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Narvaez describes 8 intelligences that parents and children can work on together at home with useful links to additional teaching resources.

The full article is reproduced below.

Psychology Today

6 Kinds of Abilities Children May Learn Better Outside Classrooms

Darcia Narvaez | April 15, 2020

What can children learn outside school?

Howard Gardner has been a proponent of what he has named "multiple intelligences." School work typically emphasizes linguistic (of a certain kind) and logico-mathematical skills, developed through reading and mathematics, the focus of most school tests these days. But there are at least six other kinds of abilities that Gardner and others have mapped, using strict criteria, which I focus on here. Gardner's eight theorized categories of mental ability (which are different from the concept of general intelligence) are representative of the talents and knowhow we see among adults generally.

Note, in every case, it is important to follow children’s interests (though you can draw attention to things and see what grabs them) and build curiosity with questions like, I wonder how….?

Here are eight groupings of abilities that parents and kids can work on outside of schoolwork.

1. Linguistic: involves the learning and use of language, from reading to writing to speaking one’s own or additional languages.

• Here is a site that describes options for online foreign language learning options for kids.

2. Logico-mathematical: includes not only mathematical reasoning but the ability to detect patterns and reason deductively, much like Sherlock Holmes.

• Here are some logic puzzles for children that can be printed. And here and here are places where you can help scientists as a citizen scientist.

3. Bodily-Kinesthetic: describes how a person moves his body in space. Star athletes have high kinesthetic ability. Think of the soccer or football player who is able to move the ball among a spread of opponents. Think of dancers (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers come to mind, with Ginger doing everything “backwards and in heels”). But also think of how this sort of ability is involved in cooking (cutting vegetables), roofing (not falling off), and just walking down the street avoiding running into anything.

• Children learn to move their bodies through interactive play with others, through dancing and sport practice (e.g., dribbling a ball). They can also learn through indoor obstacle courses and everyday challenges like carrying a glass of water without spilling. Here are more ideas.

4. Musical: involves carrying a tune, playing an instrument and giving nuance in musical performance. Composing and arranging music takes knowhow about particular instruments’ capabilities and harmonization. Jazz playing takes on-the-spot awareness and flexibility, where each musician is responding to the other in real time.

• Children can sing, inventing or mimicking songs they heard. They can create a dance routine or make a composition with different sounds from their body. They can learn to play an instrument with dedicated, coached practice. But they can also learn to appreciate music and identify better and worse performances. The family or even communities can sing together, a tradition in Denmark. This can happen online, as occurs under shelter-in-place orders. Here is a site with bully-proof song videos.

5. Spatial: what we see in engineers who are able to imagine the workings of machines, bridges, or cities.

• When children build things, they are fostering spatial skills, whether it's creative Lego building or constructing forts or machines. Here are exercises that parents can use with children.

6. Interpersonal: concerns the art of getting along with others. Relational attunement is the ability to flexibly respond to the other in the moment, without an agenda or manipulation. The ability to understand others, be patient and responsive in working through conflicts are aspects that are related to doing well in life generally.

• Role-playing and acting out stories with others builds these abilities. Learning to mediate conflicts helps children learn to take the perspectives of others. Here are more suggestions.

7. Intrapersonal: has to do with knowing yourself, your preferences, your intuitions, your needs. Good therapy involves developing this ability so that the baggage of misconceptions about self (e.g., being in danger, being worthless) can be dropped.

• Children are still in the course of building themselves and need lots of different experiences to grow. Still, the best way to help them build intrapersonal ability is to let them follow their impulses for growth. Erich Fromm notes a case where a parent interfered with a child’s growth impulses: a boy came home and gushed about a new friend. The parent did not approve of that child’s background and discouraged the boy from playing with that child. The parent continued to interfere with the son’s choices of friendships (for reasons of prejudice), undermining the son’s growth and happiness. Here are ideas for parents and kids.

8. Naturalist: involves awareness of natural entities and systems. In our ancestral contexts (hunter-gatherer), it is a type of interpersonal ability because other entities in nature are treated as sentient and alive.

• In the backyard, children can play in mud or sand, construct habitats for animals or insects, garden for pollinators or kitchen food. More ideas here. For parents who really want to dig in, here is a PDF with a host of ideas.

Other kinds of abilities that have not made it into Gardner’s list, but have been considered, include Spiritual, Existentialist, and Moral. Nonwestern cultures still support these today, as a matter of being a good human being.

When I was a classroom middle school Spanish teacher for several years, I tried to incorporate Gardner's ideas in my instruction. Today as a university professor I try to do the same. We play folk song games with each other and with children as a way to learn them all at once (linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal) and to find joy in the moment.

More ideas for developing these abilities that can be adopted for home life are here.

References

Gardner, Howard (1983) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, Howard (1999) Intelligence Reframed. Multiple intelligences for the 21st century, New York: Basic Books.