Using My Strength In My Teaching

According to Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence, a teacher or an instructor may find different students in a single class or group who have the ability to learn in a visual-spatial way,some other are able to learn by discovering for themselves in a hands on way, while others have a concrete way of learning in a logical thinking way, where as others prefer or are able to learn through spatial judgment and visualize with their mind eye. 

Basing on the above tenets of Gardner's theory, I have the following strength though some times limited by the conditions at hand at our school:

By considering the verbal-linguistic intelligence,the main medium of communication is English at our school. How ever, there are some students who come from other countries other than Uganda like from Rwanda and Congo D.R.C who had never learned sufficient English Language but are used to the French Language. while some come from Tanzania and Kenya but feel more comfortable to communicate using Swahili-but know some English language. I usually ask individual questions in my Geography lessons of how some Geographical phenomena are called in their language. As students give out the different names in different languages, those who are not pro-English are observed smiling in acknowledgement that they have understood a phenomena in question.

For the ability to visualize with the mind eye, we use the discussion method. In this method I form up small groups of ten students each group and assign them a task to discuss about for the next lesson. Each group produces one presenter who presents on behalf of his/her group. In this way, students begin to challenge each other when they critic their friends' arguments. In that way, they visualize with the mind of the eye.

With spatial judgment, I usually take students for field work and we use the environment as a laboratory since some students are adventurous.

I some times encourage students to form up Geography albums and write simple essays to accompany a given photo or geographical event. this gives chance to the students with the Introspective capacities to explore their prowess in writing.

With music, I am not good at music. But the teenagers I teach love music a lot. So we as a class some times acronym some phrases which need proper grasping. For example when teaching Geography of North America, some names of place or lakes; like the great lakes of the USA (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, we phrased a song with a verse 'Some Men Have Eaten Oranges' but each word in that verse stands for a lake in the USA.In that way students get to understand what I teach them and enjoy it.

Even though the Multiple intelligences approach to teaching is effective to trigger off the students' understanding of what is taught, I find it difficult to cater for every individual student's strength and weakness. I teach many students which make my classes big. This even makes the Connell's Multiple Intelligence Questionnaire for Children difficult for me to use. Besides, the result oriented nature of my school and Uganda's curriculum some times makes me spoon feed the student in order to complete the syllabus.