Chapter 11: MI and Special Education

Special education sadly tends to focus on what students can’t do instead of what they can do. Being lower functioning than average in one intelligence does not mean that a student isn’t going to be well versed in another intelligence. MI theory supports the idea that forcing students who have disabilities or difficulties to focus only on what they struggle with and rarely let them explore the intelligences they excel at is no way to teach. A dyslexic student might struggle with reading, but be a brilliant spatial and bodily-kinesthetic learner. MI suggests that rather than try to work on reading in a linguistic sense, work on it in the intelligences the student excels at. Students in special education with IEPs need to be taught in all the intelligences, just like students in mainstream classrooms. Everyone is smart in different combinations of intelligences, and special education students are no different: we just need to learn to teach to them in a style they understand. I am currently in an Alternative Education classroom at Mt. Blue and the way my mentor teacher handles students with learning disabilities, behavioral problems and “at risk” home lives is MI theory at it’s best. I hope to continue learning from her different ways to teach students who may not have the set of intelligences teachers are used to.