A05jtyler

Go to A04jtyler

The Multiple Intelligences Indicator in Appendix B of our text (Silver et al. 2000) suggest that I am either very comfortable in an intelligence of very uncomfortable but there is not much room for a middle ground. The five intelligences in which I am very comfortable are Naturalist, Intrapersonal, Spatial, Logical-Mathematical and Verbal-Linguistic. On the other hand I am a (near ?) moron when it come to Interpersonal, Bodily-Kinesthetic, and musical. [I anticipated the Musical low score and to compensate, I started taking music lessons this term, and I have been very surprised how much I enjoy working on the key-board.]

The assessment of the inventory seems credible. If I could [1] make a living as a hermit writer in Alaska and [2] still pay off the Karmic debt I generated by surviving Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea then I think I would be gone already. But I doubt I will feel like I have paid off the survivor’s debt as long as I am alive (perhaps similar to the Ruth Benedict’s description of the Japanese notion of not being able to payoff 1/10000th of the debt we owe to society)– and one way I feel I have for repaying the debt – or at least servicing the interest is to teach.

If Dr. Gardner were to include Existential Intelligence as one of the set then I that would probably my strongest. I tend to dislike peer interaction, especially if it is required, and prefer to create meaning through independent research, reflection and communication with experts and leading authorities in the field. In this term, for example, if I could have exchanged e-mails with Professor Henry Giroux regarding critical pedagogy it would have likely been much more helpful than all the time I have had to invest in tracking posting of classmates (though they are all nice folks and I wish them well).

There were no surprises in the Indicator results. Even before I mastered the MI labels I knew I did not like working in groups, and that mastery was just a preliminary step on the path to mastery and self-expression. Then in preparation for this course I did the on-line learning styles assessment inventory available through NCSU by Felder and Soloman.