MI Chapter 5

Chapter 5 explained how to incorporate MI theory into the curriculum. I really liked how it mentioned that the No Child Left Behind law has created restrictions on how to do this easily, but it has also been used throughout history, even recognized by Plato. Although it may have not been fully recognized or used to its full potential, it’s encouraging to hear that it’s been used by many influential people in education. Another thing I really liked about this chapter was how it pointed out that MI theory can be used in any classroom, which really helps explain how easy it can be to implement such a vast idea into your personal classroom. This chapter really helped put my mind at ease, because using MI theory seems like such a hard concept, especially since there is no set way to accomplishing it. In other ways I thoroughly embrace the idea that one or two ideas for specific learning styles can be translated through your own personal interpretation to encompass all the other learning styles. I think that this could be problematic and worthwhile at the same time. In one way, you are incorporating the themes as you see fit to benefit the students, so they are bound to all be on a similar page. The other way though, is this can cause your classroom to still have a personal bias which isn’t really helping the students as much as the MI instruction methods should. I think that it should have been mentioned that, in this regard, teachers should find colleagues with strengths in learning styles you have a harder time recognizes, and review lessons with them to get a better insight into the appropriateness of the activity. Also, having students contribute ideas on what works best for them would be extremely useful, which the chapter did mention.