We All Learn Differently

When entering junior high, studying a foreign language became an option for me. It was generally reserved for only the best students (which I wasn’t), but with a lot of pushing from my father I took a Spanish class and quickly got in over my head. At one point, as I struggled, my teacher bent down and whispered to me that I was not cut out to learn Spanish.

I wish this was a story of how I turned her comment into a war cry and I became fluent after only a few months. Unfortunately, her prediction was right and I was not able to continue on to the next level.

After serving as a Spanish-speaking missionary in the Dominican Republic, I wanted to return and show her how I learned Spanish. The friend I was with told her of my two-year linguistic adventure. She immediately asked me a question in Spanish. I was caught off guard. Her pronunciation and accent were horrible! I must confess I had an unhealthy portion of arrogant pride when I reminded her how she told me I was incapable of learning Spanish.

There are a lot of lessons learned from that situation like: encouragement doesn’t always work, but discouragement frequently does work. The more important lesson, I learned years later. I am extremely capable and, in fact, even more capable than the teacher, but the methods employed in that junior high class room were never going to be successful.

Contrast that with my experience with a math teacher, Mrs. Barbara Bergeron. I struggled horribly in math. She, however, could not understand how I could be so good with computer programming (something highly mathematical), yet so bad at math. She took me aside and tried to understand what it was that I didn’t understand. Then a stroke of genius hit her: I should develop computer programs that taught the principle I struggled with for extra credit (which I badly needed).

I built those programs. I built my confidence. I got that extra credit. More importantly, I went from a bad math student to a great math student. At that point I missed the honors math track and realized I had wasted years of struggling when the answer was so simple: I just needed to learn in a different way than everyone else. For me, to improve, I had to take charge of my own education.

At least I’m in a prestigious group that struggled with traditional education and had to take self-education seriously. Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, and Richard Branson are all great achievers that either struggled in school or had little formal education.

It makes me wonder if schools are really preparing us for life.

I believe that most people really want to learn, but just need a little help finding what works for them. I wish there was a way I could adequately thank and recognize Mrs. Bergeron for what she did for me. I can’t imagine what life would be without the few minutes of care and compassion that she took on my behalf.