MI+B2+Chapter+2

**Abstract and Synthesis**
Chapter 2: MI Theory and Personal Development emphasizes the importance of teachers getting to know their own intelligences, which can be done by using the survey in this chapter. Teachers should know the intelligences that they are not so strong in so that when they are confused with them or need to use them they can seek out help. Also, having teachers be aware of their most mature intelligence means they will know the intelligence they are most likely to teach for. When a teacher needs help with an intelligence or intelligences there are plenty of resources that can help them. These include calling on your colleagues’ expertise, [|using technology] and even using your own students who are mature in that specific intelligence. A teacher must know that there are certain circumstances such as environment, biology and cultural background that affect how intelligences develop within a person. Besides these factors intelligence development can be ignited or extinguished with everyday experiences. These are referred to as “crystallizing” and “paralyzing” experiences respectively.
 * By: Kassaundra**

The idea that educators need to figure out what their most mature intelligence is will impact us all as future teachers. We need to find our most mature intelligence or intelligences so that we can know which styles we would teach more towards and also so that we can examine the areas we are weak in and try to develop these more or at least be conscious of them. Furthermore, by identifying the intelligence we utilize the most we can take an opportunity to become more aware of the other intelligences. Besides just recognizing what intelligence we use the most we need to be able to find help when it comes to the other intelligences. Many future teachers are surprised to hear some of the [|“MI Resources”] that are available to them. Some never thought that other students or the student with the specific intelligence themselves could educate them and others on how they learn best. Besides this, future teachers need to become comfortable with technology so that it can help them become comfortable when they need MI help. Since our students’ intelligences can be affected by biology, culture and environmental influences, we will need to truly learn where our students come from and what types of lives they have. Perhaps the most looming task is remembering that students’ intelligences can develop at any time throughout their lives and we as teachers have the ability to either promote these intelligences or suppress them. By being aware of this and consciously working not to discourage any one intelligence to our students we can help foster a classroom where many different intelligences flourish.

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Ryan Pelletier
Chapter 2 of “Multiple Intelligences” shows how the MI theory cannot only be applied to students, but also to us as educators. Armstrong finds it important to determine our own MI strengths and weaknesses and map out how this will affect our teaching process. Having a lack of musical proficiency can mean we don’t often bring musical resources into the classroom as we are not comfortable with the medium. I found it interesting that one of the remedies he finds to this problem is in using your students to help out in these areas. This seems like a great way to fix any gaps that we may have in our teaching plan while also making the classroom an interactive environment.

Matt Towle
MI Chapter 2: MI Theory and Personal Development

Chapter two dealt with different ways of developing the eight different intelligences. There are many factors that affect the development of each of the intelligences either positively or negatively. One thing the book mentioned was that a “paralyzing experience” can occur when someone’s ideas are criticized. For example, if they are trying to learn piano and someone is annoyed with the sound. This is important for me to know as a future teacher because I will be put in many situations where I could either help or hurt the development of an intelligence. This impacts me and my future as a teacher because it will be important for me to develop, or at least gain a good understanding of, each of the intelligences in order to be able to accommodate for the variety of intelligences I will be dealing with/teaching in the classroom

Kassaundra Ricker
Chapter 2: MI Theory and Personal Development Chapter 2 discusses the importance of intelligences with personal development. It highlights that it is important for teachers to know their most mature intelligence. This means I need to be aware of my most mature intelligences so that I can address them and then find help when my students possess other intelligences. Also, as a teacher, just because I am not comfortable with some of the intelligences doesn’t mean I can’t help students who are. I can talk to my colleagues as well as ask other students for help. It is important for me to understand that certain circumstances in a student’s life can affect how each intelligence develops within them. Also, experiences labeled crystallizing and paralyzing can affect how intelligences develop within oneself. In a crystallizing experience the intelligence has an opportunity to develop more maturely while adversely in a paralyzing experience intelligences can be suppressed. Since both of these scenarios can happen anytime in a person’s life, I, as a teacher can promote or suppress my students’ intelligences and I need to be highly aware of this.

Lyzz Stevenson

 * Chapter 2**: Learning about yourself and how you learn is valuable as an educator. It is important to understand how you learn best as these might be your strongest ways of teaching. It is important to work on teaching in all areas and through all learning styles as many students will find success in multiple ways. This impacts me because I now know how I learn best. I know what works for me, and what doesn’t. This will influence how I teach as I am a bodily-kinesthetic and I think that it is important to teach outside the traditional ways. I can also take my knowledge of how I learn and use it to my advantage when teaching and working with other kinesthetic learners.

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Charli Sayward
It was interesting to read how teachers could affect the development of a person’s intelligences. This impacted me because I could have the potential to someday influence a genius! I hope to always keep the MI Theory in mind when teaching a class; this will be very useful in finding ways to help my students. I appreciated reading how teachers shouldn’t be afraid to ask students for help, especially when it comes to what they think would be helpful for them. As someone who isn’t as musically inclined, I do worry I won’t be as creative with incorporating music in my classroom. I found it helpful to read that I can still ask students for advice. Since I want to really connect with my students, and also give them a sense of purpose in a classroom, what better way to do this than by asking for their opinion?

Kelly Steinhagen
Chapter 2: MI Theory and Personal Development The next chapter made me realize how important it is for me to truly understand my own intelligences so that I can effectively use multiple intelligence strategies in the classroom. I realize now that I used adjectives in my chapter one response like “stronger”, but technically there is no such thing. Everyone can develop the differing intelligences, which means that even though my musical intelligence is my lowest right now it could become my most important intelligence in the future. The book mentions “crystallizing” and “paralyzing” experiences, meaning different turning points that either lead your or keep you from developing certain intelligences. I can think back to my own childhood when my mom repeatedly told me that no one in the family is artistic, and sure enough I have no interest in creating my own art. From that thought, I realized that I never want to be a teacher that discourages creative and innovative thought because what if I successfully paralyze someone’s intelligence? I was surprised how easily a person can be influenced towards one intelligence or another during childhood.

Kaitlyn Haase
MI Theory and Personal Development: In chapter 2, I learned the importance of knowing my own strengths and deficiencies in each of the eight intelligences. By knowing this information, I will be aware of what may be lacking in my classroom. For example, I am not theatrically inclined so it may be unlikely for me to incorporate acting or role-playing into a lesson on my own. I liked the suggestions of asking a colleague (perhaps a drama teacher in this example) for assistance or even asking students to give their input and help out. I also learned that the intelligences can expand over time but some factors could prohibit or “paralyze” development. In class it is important to give students opportunities to develop in the eight different intelligences because an activity could ignite the development of their strongest intelligence.

**Jenn Baum**
Chapter 2: MI Theory and Personal Development: This was a really important chapter because it pointed out the fact that as teachers we have to remember that others learn differently than we do. This means that I’ll have to work hard to go out of my comfort zone and not teach solely in the ways that I learn best. For example, I am not particularly strong as a spatial learner, so I will have to make sure to keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone in that area, by continuing to incorporate it into my classroom so that students who have strong spatial skills will be able to excel and learn in that way. I also liked the advice that the author provided for making sure you use all of the Multiple Intelligences, which were to use the advice of other colleagues, to use the students, as well as using technology. The ability to master any of the intelligences is also largely dependent on biological circumstances, unique lives, and the culture that a person is born into. As a teacher, I will have to try to provide opportunities, which promote experiences that, could inspire students rather than dissuade them from pursuing a particular dream or intelligence.

**Olivia Norris**
In chapter two, I learned about the multiple intelligences I might see as an educator. We have to work to understand the students needs in the classroom. In order to reach those needs, we need to tap into "MI resources." There are many ways to make sure that my students are being reached: using available technology, asking students to help out, and asking other colleagues to help me in the classroom. I learned that in order to reach my students I need to work with others to get them engaged.
 * Chapter 2:** MI Theory and Personal Development

Erin O'Halloran
Chapter 2: MI Theory and Personal Development was interesting because it explained how environmental influences change the levels of intelligence dramatically. There was no doubt in my mind that environment did not have a control on aptitude, but this chapter listed some different factors of environment and how they affect students. This explained for me what to look for if I feel that a certain environment is causing one of my students distress and if his or her grades are suffering. This will help me with my personal connection with the students which I feel is so important. Another section that interested me was the section on how we obtain our intelligences, and this, again, ties into environment. Heredity, experiences, and culture all play equal parts in a human development of intelligence. I understand that not every student will develop a style of learning before entering high school, so hopefully my environment within my classroom will serve as a good experience and will put that student on the right track.

Megan Wallace
Chapter 2:

I learned that a person could develop all of their intelligences to a high level. When I had first learned about the theory of multiple intelligences I had thought that the way things are is the way things would always be for a person. I never knew that one could develop an area of weakness to relatively high level. This makes me want to develop some of my weaker areas. It also makes me aware of the potential of my students. I hope to remain aware that way I will never underestimate what any of them are capable of.

Justin Stewart
The second chapter introduced ways to meet the needs of the classroom as a whole. The author spoke about the need to help as many of your students as possible, but not to expect to help every one. This chapter gave me a few ideas that I wouldn’t mind implementing if I do perceive a problem with one of my students. One of my big worries was that I wouldn’t be able to satisfy every type of learner with every lesson I taught. Being able to diagnose that there is a problem and then attempt to discover the cause is a very important step. Teaching is a continuous learning process that will never stop because there are so many different types of learners that I will have to account for.

Alyssa Wadsworth
One of the sections in this chapter is called “Use available technology” (page 27). In the classroom, using technology to make up for a deficiency in a specific intelligence could help the students; this is much better than ignoring an intelligence simply because the teacher is lacking it. Another thing to remember from chapter two while teaching is that intelligences can develop at different ages, according to the person—so no matter what age group we teach, our students might not yet know what their strongest intelligence is. Something teachers should try to do without needing to read this chapter, but might not occur to the teacher, is that students need to experience many more “crystallizing experiences” than “paralyzing experiences” in order to develop their intelligences (pages 28-29). This is something I will not forget, so it will always impact my students and certainly me as a teacher.

**Darcie Simmons**
In this second chapter I feel that I learned a lot of new information. The first chapter was about things that we have been talking about in the past week or so. What really stuck out to me for was the term “paralyzing experiences”. In the book this was defined as experiences that “shut down” certain intelligences in your brain. I found this to be very interesting, because something like that did happen to me in elementary school with a teacher and math. I was forced to go to the board and do the math problem when I clearly stated to the teacher I didn’t know how to do it. After having read this it seemed to make sense to me why I panic when it comes to math.

Taylor Kemp
From this chapter I learned that all of the intelligences can be developed in various ways. They and also be put to a stop. These two actions are called crystallizing experiences (developing) and paralyzing experiences ( shut down). Also your environment as well as biological factors can play a big role in what intelligences are strongly present in a person. What your parents were like, where you grew up, social class, time period all play a roll. The impact that this has on me is that it makes me think about the variables in my life and evaluate how much they effected me and shaped the prominent intelligence that I posses. For my classroom it will have a large effect. It is something to be aware of when you are teaching, knowing the students home life and background information, as well as geographical information can make it easier to reach them.

Bri Douglass
In the beginning of this chapter it talked about how not only do students need to know what areas they are underdeveloped in but also the teacher. The author also went into more detail in this chapter about what must be done to become more proficient in certain areas. I learned that in order to develop these intelligences three things must happen biological endowment, personal life history and cultural and historical background. By knowing my own areas of weakness within the 8 intelligences I will be better able to focus on how to incorporate this into my teaching. For instance I know one of my weaknesses is music so therefore I will need to seek out help in order to help my students who flourish in this area. Also by teaching with all 8 styles I will be able to help my students become masters in all 8 intelligences.

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Linda McLaughlin
During chapter two, I learned that different factors impact the development of an individual’s intelligences. These factors are biological, personal history, and cultural/historical background. I think that it makes sense that personal history and cultural background can affect the development of an intelligence because those are factors that would impact an individual anyway. However, I found it surprising that biology can affect the development of intelligences. Also, I learned that crystallizing experiences are events that start the development of an intelligence, and that a paralyzing experience can stop the development of an intelligence because they seem to generally be negative experiences. This is going to impact me as a teacher because I’m going to have to focus on creating crystallizing experiences so that intelligences can develop. Also, I’m going to have to learn about my students and where they come from so that I can understand why certain intelligences may have developed over others.