| Expressions: Multiple Intelligences in the English Class by Peter Smagorinsky | ||
When I was a high school student, my English teachers were just beginning to tap into learning through the multiple senses. However, my senior English teacher strove to cater to everyone’s intelligibility. For example, when she taught The Great Gatsby, she included the music, fashion, culture and dance steps of the era as a part of her unit. She ended the unit with a party where the students dressed in the appropriate “roaring ‘20’s” garb, learn the Charleston and present one aspect of American culture in the 1920’s to the class. Although I did not realize it at the time, my teacher was teaching through the Multiple Intelligences.
Multiple Intelligences have become a hot topic for debate in recent years. Gardener’s research, which is fairly new and
very cutting edge has great potential to forever alter the way in which we teach our
youth. However, many conventional teachers
struggle with the practical application of the concept.
While teachers may try to integrate different ways of teaching the material, most
are successful mainly in integrating cooperative learning more than multi-intellectual
learning. Because I noticed this from my own
experience as a student of English, when the occasion to read a book which directly
addresses the usage of Multiple Intelligences in the English classroom, I became
interested. As a pre-service teacher of
English at the secondary level, I am looking for ideas that would help me keep from
perpetuating the misconceptions that my teachers held when I was a student.
Smagorinsky’s book, Expressions: Multiple Intelligences in the English Class is
an excellent resource, not only for teachers who are just starting out, but is also
appropriate for a more experienced English teacher who needs ideas that are more
innovatively in line with the newer waves of teaching strategies. The book begins with a basic overview of Howard
Gardener’s theory of the existence of Multiple Intelligences for those who might not
be entirely familiar with the theory itself. Smagorinsky
also details the need for understanding Multiple Intelligences, the argument for
implementation in the classroom through the example of Mexican-American students, and the
contrast Gardener’s theory provides to Bloom, Hirsch and Ravich (3). He is also careful to refute the argument of
linguistic/logical-mathematical primacy with examples of other cultures and periods of
time who emphasize and value other intelligences more highly (4). His summary of
Gardener’s theory as well as his argument for the theory is concise, yet informative. At the end of this section, Smagorinsky actively
takes the position in favor of the implementation of the theory of Multiple Intelligences
into practice in the classroom. However, at
first I understood him to mean that this should be the only teaching method used in the classroom. I immediately began brainstorming reasons why
other means of instruction should be used alongside the multi-sensical approach, time
constraints being the first on my list. Upon
continued reading however, I discovered that Smagorinsky did not mean this at all. He states, “I don’t suggest that we replace instruction in linguistic expression with
the construction of meaning through other intelligences.
Rather, I suggest that it serve as a complementary means of expression” (5). However, this stance is not made clear until the
very last paragraph of this section and a teacher who is already a bit leery of a new
stylistic approach to teaching could get scared off before applicable activities are ever
read. The second section of the book is
a general, intelligence by intelligence look at individual activities that could be
incorporated into a high school classroom. This
section is full of many great ideas. Smagorinsky
gives multi-sensical learning ideas for every aspect of the English classroom: journals, writing, literary themes, drama,
interviews, and literature. The ideas are
well organized by intelligence and would be
helpful to a new teacher who is building a collection of activities, or to an experienced
teacher who is looking to spice up the “old-faithful’s.”
The third section of this book is the Appendix.
This section includes actual lesson plans about specific topics such as Puritan
Ethics, Social Responsibility, Point of View, Imagery, Comparison and Contrast writing and
Artistic Response to Literature. These are
also valuable resources that any teacher, new or old, could draw upon. They are generic enough so that they are easily
incorporated into individual classrooms. Many
are even presented in such a way that the teacher him or herself could brainstorm an
activity from the little prod provided. The
author also includes an excellent list of “Teacher’s Text References,”
complete with bibliographic information so that if a teacher wanted to read further, he or
she would have a list of the resources in which to do so.
Overall, Smagorinsky’s book is an excellent resource for both old and new
teachers. It is short, informative, and
highly practical. Expressions would be an excellent spring-board for
a school district to hand out to it’s teachers in order to keep them abreast of the
most innovative teaching theories and strategies. Appeals
to the multiple intelligences are quickly becoming another facet of the classroom. This book is an excellent tool for teachers who
want to be a part of that universal classroom.
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