In our workshop today, we want new teachers to reflect on their “teaching and learning styles.”  Our goals through these activities are to help them see themselves as teachers and learners, reflect on what impact their personality has on how they teach and learn, and how this understanding can inform their practice.  We bring to our work as teachers experiences from a variety of learning environments.  These experiences, as well as our personalities, shapes how we see themselves as teachers and learners.

We are using the Grasha-Riechmann Teaching Styles inventory as a model.  In addition, we are having them complete a multiple intelligence inventory and Sternberg inventory for looking at learning styles.  Teachers completed the inventories, assembled in small groups to process their results and discuss what they learned about themselves, and then described the pros and cons of Grasha-Riechmann’s five teaching styles.

This video clip shows different groups collaborating and discussing what they learned about themselves.

Grasha-Riechmann’s five teaching styles are:

• Expert
• Formal authority
• Personal Model
• Facilitator
•  Delegator

New teachers were definitely able to see the pros and cons of looking at themselves through the Grasha-Riechmann inventory.  While they seemed to gain insight into themselves as teachers, they also understood some of the limitations of the model.

We created a series of activities that had them study multiple intelligences.  First, they viewed a music-video as an introduction to the MI learning styles model.  Check out this website for resources on multiple intelligences.  They broke into smaller groups based on what their dominant learning style was and constructed a visual map of how they interpreted the style.  They were also asked to come up with types of activities and assessments that would use that specific intelligence.  We did three rounds of this activity, building out the map with input from multiple groups.  We also had groups contribute to the map based on that intelligence being their weakest.  Below is a video showing the different maps for each intelligence and the debriefing of the activity.

These activities helped the new teachers build a “sense of themselves” as a teacher.