by Lorinda K. F. Newton
When I began to investigate homeschooling, I asked a homeschooling mom at my church for advice on how to get started. She suggested that I study learning styles. She explained that understanding her children’s learning styles helped her immensely when teaching them. I followed her advice and read about this topic.
One book she recommended was Howard Gardner’s book Multiple Intelligences. This theory goes beyond the traditional IQ test type of intelligence and recognizes that people can be intelligent in eight ways: spatial, naturalist, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and logical-mathematical.
Often in a classroom setting, a child can feel dumb because academics focus on the linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences. He may not have these intelligences, but he might be spatially intelligent. My father-in-law barely graduated from high school in the 1930s, but he could build almost anything as a finishing carpenter and later as a prototype machinist. My son inherited these visual 3-D strengths.
I found this knowledge that people can be smart without being “classroom” smart encouraging as I taught my kids.
Learning Style Expert Cynthia Tobias
Another expert on learning styles is Cynthia Tobias, who has written several books on learning.
I had the opportunity to interview her in 1997 when I wrote a bimonthly author profile column for the now-defunct Christian Library Journal. Below is a shortened version of that article, “Meeting Needs with Style: Cynthia Ulrich Tobias.”
—
A curious puzzle led Cindy Tobias to her current profession. As a high school teacher, she noticed that many of her favorite students weren’t “school material.” They wouldn’t sit, be quiet, and had several other behavior problems.
“I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t reaching some of the brightest kids who were bored with school,” said Tobias. “Then when I would return to corporate America in the summer, I would find that you got hired for all the things you got in trouble for in school. This didn’t make sense.” She felt she wasn’t preparing her students for the world.
Then in 1980, Tobias found an answer to this school/work inconsistency when she attended a learning-styles class. Shortly thereafter, she enrolled in Seattle Pacific University’s (SPU) learning-styles master’s degree program. Next, came an internship and teaching some adjunct classes on learning styles for SPU.
Today, nationally known speaker and author Cynthia Ulrich Tobias provides parents and teachers hope and a new perspective on learning.
Learning Styles Unlimited
Tobias began her full-time speaking ministry, Learning Styles Unlimited, in January 1987. The ministry’s primary purpose is to tell frustrated parents: “You have a very bright, gifted child. Now, let’s figure out ways to use that giftedness instead of making him feel he’s not smart just because he doesn’t fit in a traditional classroom.” By explaining the different learning styles, Tobias hopes that people will understand that there are other ways to get a job done.
Also, when someone, either a child or an adult, works against his learning style, he often becomes overwhelmed and feels stupid. Understanding how you learn and work best and why certain methods frustrate you can be quite liberating and open the door to success, explained Tobias.
Unfortunately, much of the material on learning styles focuses only on what a single researcher believes, and several ideas are trapped in what Tobias calls the “intellectual cul de sac.” Most parents and teachers don’t have the time or desire to weed through this academic material. “So I felt it was my mission to pull out some of that strong, empirical research, turn it into something practical, and bring it to the street where most people live,” she said.
Not only does Tobias make it practical, but she also provides an overview of several learning-style concepts because one system doesn’t work with all people. Tobias doesn’t present her own theories: “I’m just a translator, a person that can make these wonderful truths practical.” She added, “I stand in awe that God allowed me to be the messenger of such hope and encouragement.”
And hope she brings. People, through letters, phone calls, and workshops, tell her stories of how the understanding of learning styles has improved their relationships with their children…
Writing About Style
News about Tobias’s workshops captured the interest of Focus on the Family. In 1992, they approached her about writing a book. The Way They Learn appeared in 1994. Next, she reworked this book into The Way We Work for the business world.
At workshops, parents clamored, “I now know my child’s learning style. What do I do? How do I use this with discipline and motivation?” In response, Tobias wrote Every Child Can Succeed. Her next book, Bring Out the Best in Your Child, expands on the parenting-with-styles theme….
Though her primary learning style is Concrete Random (CR), Tobias forces herself to write her books sequentially. “I have to practice what I preach. If I’m going to tell teachers and parents that we can adjust to different styles, I have to prove that I can do it, too,” she explained. Because she is stretching her own learning style, she can only write in spurts. Writing sequentially for a long time would “drive her nuts.”
…At school, work, or family time, for Cynthia Ulrich Tobias, it’s all a matter of style.
Book Reviews
These book reviews originally appeared in the Christian Library Journal in September 1997.
Every Child Can Succeed: Making the Most of Your Child’s Learning Style
Focus on the Family Publishing ©August 1996.
“Often, the characteristics and behaviors that annoy us the most about our children will be the qualities that make them successful as adults,” states Cynthia Ulrich Tobias.
In Every Child Can Succeed, the author instructs parents on how to apply their children’s learning styles to various aspects of their lives: homework, family life, discipline, motivation, accountability, working in a classroom and with their teachers. The book opens with a review of learning styles presented in ”The Way They Learn.” With an understanding of their children’s learning styles, parents are better equipped to help their children succeed in life. Tobias also provides a chapter on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and closes with a chapter on how to celebrate the styles of children. A bibliography lists other learning-style resources for further study.
Tobias writes in a friendly, easy-to-read style, filling the book with several everyday examples. Each chapter closes with practical exercises for parents to try. The tables and charts illustrate the concepts discussed, and the worksheets in the appendixes are easy to use and understand. Throughout the book, the author focuses on the positive aspects of each style, stressing that learning styles are value-neutral.
Bring Out the Best in Your Child: 120 Ways to Focus on Every Kid’s Strengths
Servant Publications ©March 1997.
“It’s easy to forget, in the heat of the moment, how truly wonderful each of our children can be,” says Cynthia Ulrich Tobias.
In Bringing Out the Best in Your Child: 80 Ways to Focus on Every Kid’s Strengths, coauthors Cindy Tobias and Carol Funk offer 80 scenarios that illustrate how to apply learning styles to real-life situations. These stories range from the toddler to high-school years and cover classroom, disciplinary, relational, familial, and responsibility issues. Here are a few chapter titles: “He’s Too Analytic to Read”; “Potty Training: Who’s Training Whom?”; “How Will I Know I’m Special?”; “This Vacation is Boring”; and “Am I an Overachiever?”
Each two- to four-page chapter concludes with two sections: “Recognizing the Strength” and “Focus on Accountability.” In the strength section, the authors explain how a particular characteristic, which may drive a parent crazy, has a positive side to it. The accountability section provides the parent with ideas on how to guide the child to use his learning style or character trait in a positive way.
This book maintains the same upbeat, positive tone of Tobias’s previous works. Unlike the others, which mostly describe learning styles, this book focuses solely on application. Parents and teachers will relate well to the real-life problems and issues presented and find the resolutions helpful.
In some cases, however, the story endings may seem contrived because a character always understands the child’s learning style and knows how to solve the presented problem. Moreover, the child and parents or teachers always seem to agree to try a nontraditional method to reach a traditional goal. Yet, this writing technique, though somewhat artificial, does work well to show readers how to recognize and apply learning styles to various situations. The authors also supply a good balance between male and female characters and multiple ages in the different scenarios.
Each chapter stands on its own, so readers can simply go to the chapter that describes the situation that they are currently dealing with. The short-chapter format makes this book accessible even to the busiest parent or teacher.
Lorinda K. F. Newton began homeschooling her children in 2004, and her family joined Academy Northwest in 2014. Her family lives on beautiful Whidbey Island north of Seattle, Washington. She writes about faith, culture, and governing from a biblical worldview on Substack, where she also publishes the “Newton Library Update” about her home library. Her older posts can be found at Lorinda’s Ponderings. ©2023 by Lorinda K. F. Newton.
