Once upon a time, as a tiny newborn baby, you knew absolutely nothing.
So have you ever wondered how exactly, you learned to roll over, sit up, crawl and start feeding yourself?
Undoubtedly you would have had people around you to stimulate your curiosity and copying instincts, and for sure, you would have had no concept of fear or failure.
Chances are that when you took your first tottering steps, there would have been a smiling adult in front of you, arms outstretched, whispering words of encouragement. Or maybe there was a favourite toy, just beyond reach, until the moment you decided to ‘go for it.'
Did you ever think to yourself ‘no way, this walking business is not for me, it's too damn hard' or ‘that's it, if I fall down once more, I'm gonna be a crawler for the rest of my life'?
I doubt it! It's more likely that you simply kept on making whatever adjustments were needed until lo and behold, you had mastered yet another amazing feat.
Early years' development is a period of ‘whole brain' (accelerated) learning, full of curiosity, fun, exploration, play and laughter (it is said that on average, a child laughs 20 times more than an adult). These natural components of learning are frequently overlooked in later years.
Take a walk into any Mothercare and you can't fail to see, hear, touch, smell or taste a seemingly infinite choice of toys that stimulate any child's five senses, producing happy brain chemicals that create an optimum state for learning.
As children mature, they increasingly ‘filter' their life experiences developing preferences for the way they learn, code and storing information. Some develop a preference for absorbing or recalling information visually, others may prefer to listen. Some people prefer to be ‘doing'. Maybe you already know your preferred learning style.
As adults, how we code our life experiences through sensory filtering has a big impact on how we continue to learn and also how we teach. Educational research suggests that almost 40% of people are kinaesthetic-dominant learners, which means they learn best by ‘doing' (interestingly almost 70% of pupils on SEN registers are kinaesthetic-dominant learners). Now the same research suggests that only 10% of teachers are kinaesthetic-dominant learners who, if they simply favoured their own learning style, could easily fail to ‘engage' the whole class.
However, things are looking good in the lifelong learning domain, as increasing numbers of teachers and trainers are up-skilling in latest brain friendly teaching methods like NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), which is particularly good news given the increasing numbers of accelerated thinkers each generation presents!
If you want to know how accelerated learning practices like NLP can help you or your child get the best educational experience, you might take a moment to recall the kind of ‘rapport' you once shared with a particularly good teacher or trainer. We all know that rapport is foundational when it comes to being able to influence and persuade, and skilled educators use a range of rapport building skills to direct learner thinking whilst keeping everyone's brains in good emotional condition. These skills are essential to whole brain learning and can easily be imported into anyone's communication toolkit.
NLP in education generates brilliant learning conditions as educators learn how to calibrate the subtle responses of learners. For example, observing eye movements can reveal how someone is processing or recalling information - a particular gem when dealing with teenagers or adults who may be busy having ‘internal dialogue.' And that's worth knowing about because it may be impossible to compete with!
NLP training provides a powerful framework for communication excellence in any walk of life. It presupposes that our brains work faster than we think. Remember how easily you learned to walk?
©Kay Cooke 2008