A Parent’s Playbook For Learning {Excerpt: Group Learning}

Mom Always Finds Out received assets for promotional use during the Parent’s Playbook For Learning book tour. All opinions expressed are my own. 

A Parent’s Playbook for Learning is a practical, detailed guide for parents (and teachers) understand how different personality types learn best.  The book even includes a personality quiz and reveals how each of the 8 personality types naturally: Get organized, Get motivated, Approach new concepts, Learn in groups, Take notes and “file” knowledge, Tackle homework and test prep, Gravitate to certain and extracurriculars and teachers, and Handle successes and failures.

The Playbook teaches parents:

• How to create a learning environment that allows children to excel and develop confidence in their abilities
• How to support and encourage their child’s education in the way that is best for him or her
• How to teach their kids the strategies that help them each play to their individual learning strengths

Mom Always Finds Out has been presented with the opportunity to share an excerpt about Group Learning from Ms. Lilienstein’s A Parent’s Playbook for Learning.

“In dealing with people, when we keep their type in mind, we are respecting not only their abstract right to develop along lines of their own choosing, but also the importance of qualities they have developed by making that choice.”

~MBTI Manual

Briggs Myers, Isabel, McCaulley, Mary H., Quenk, Naomi L., & Hammer, Allen L. (1998)

A

fox once struck a deal with a lion, on the pretense of helping each other to dine like kings. Each undertook a role that fully utilized his own nature and strengths. When the fox discovered and pointed out their prey, the lion pounced on it and killed it. The fox soon began to think that he could be equally as successful going it alone, and said that he would no longer team up with the lion, but would capture prey on his own.

The next day he attempted to snatch a lamb from the fold, but instead fell prey to the huntsman and his hounds.

Combining forces can yield better results for all involved.

If you are a part of an organization or company, you have had an opportunity to experience how many individuals’ talents and energies can combine to create something much more powerful than an individual who goes it alone.

But in order to truly get the best result, each individual involved must have the opportunity to play to his or her strengths and talents. For instance, using a trained artist as an accountant within an organization while the “numbers guy” designs ads will not be nearly as successful as it could have been had the organization flopped the roles. In the same way, a born artist trained as an accountant won’t be as effective or energized analyzing the books as a born statistician would be.

Group learning can be enormously powerful for kids, but it needs to be approached in a similar way. Just as we discussed in our chapter on approaching new concepts, kids are all coming at the conceptual elephant from different angles. They first need peer acknowledgement that their perception is accurate. Then, they need to practice and cement their knowledge and expand their understanding of the concept. Finally, they need to get a more holistic view of how this concept fits into the larger puzzle.

One way to look at this is to think of knowledge not as a wall that every child adds to from the ground up in an identical way, but as a Rubik’s Cube with the concept at the very center of the cube that expands brick by brick in three dimensions. How kids choose to build that cube depends on their innate world view. If they don’t get acknowledgement that their initial block of understanding is accurate, they won’t be able to put this understanding in the context of the bigger picture as quickly or successfully.

WHERE TO BUY:

A Parent’s Playbook for Learning by Jen Lilienstein is available at nationwide retailers including: Barnes & Noble,  Smashwords, KOBO and online at Amazon.

Learn more about Author Jen Lilienstein on Goodreads and Kidzmet.