Today I'm jumping a bit out of my own realm, and trying on something different. I read a non-fiction book. There. (nods solemnly) See? I survived! ROFL.
No seriously though. I read Jen Lilienstein's book; A Parent's Playbook for Learning, and although it's not my "normal" reading material, it was fun to see if I could apply this to myself and my son, who just started school in August this year. I was fortunate enough to be able to ask Jen some questions, so settle in, and let's see how it went:
Sabina: Hi Jen, and thank you so much for
taking the time to answer a few questions.
S: First, would you please tell my readers
a little about yourself?
By morning and evening, I am a parent. By
day, I am a marketing consultant. By night, I devour education and personality
type research. I don’t sleep much, but I really enjoy all the facets I’ve
brought into my life. I keep hoping science will figure out a way to keep 365
days in the year, but squeeze out 30 hours a day!
S: Why did you write A Parent’s Playbook
for learning?
I really wanted to make sure my kids LOVED learning. For me,
education isn’t so much about what you can stuff in, but how you inspire kids
to learn and connect the dots on their own. I wasn’t doing a very good job of
it on my own even though I’d done extremely well in school and am definitely modeling life-long
learning. Once I started employing personality type techniques, things started
to click for my kids. I think inspiring a lifelong love of learning in your kids
is one of your most important tasks on a parenting to-do list. With 20-30 kids
in a classroom during the school day, teachers need backup.
S: Reading your book, I found it hard to
put both my son (who just started school this year), but even myself into the
different “boxes”. Finding out if we were introverts or extraverts were fairly
easy, but finding out if we were a Judger or perceiver, turned out to be a bit
more difficult, even harder to find out what kind of judger/perceiver we were. Do you experience this often? And what do you
recommend?
It’s important to remember that it’s more
of a continuum than a box. To which side do you lean when you’re NOT under
stress? (Many people find they flip sides or the pendulum swings when under
stress.) If you enjoy crossing things off a to-do list and prefer more order
and schedule in your life, you are probably a judger. If you tend to leave things until the last
minute because that’s when you do your best work and prefer to stay in the
“what if…” stage as long as humanly possible, you are probably a perceiver.
S: What do you think is the biggest
challenge for a parent who is an introvert/extravert, when the child is the
opposite?
Definitely how to tackle homework. Introverts need to do homework
first and then talk through their
thinking. Extraverts need the opposite—they need to talk through the assignment
first and then get down to business.
S: What kind of Learner are you?
Introverted feeler.
S: What are you working on right now? (Or
your next project?)
My next project is to take the nearly 40,000 profiles that
have been completed on Kidzmet.com and see what kinds of parallels can be drawn
between the different preferences. Which ones work in tandem more often? How
does/should that impact the ways in which we engage and motivate students?
S: Do you have a piece of advice for
parents whose kids just started school?
Make sure both you AND their teachers
see your kids’ Kidzmet profiles. It’s a free service and can give both teachers
and parents a toolbox from which to draw if your child has trouble in the
classroom. (And you might not even know your child is having issues until after
the first report card!)
Thank you Jen, for answering my questions! If you want to know a little more about Jen, here's her bio:
Jen completed her undergraduate senior
thesis on Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence and its effect on self-esteem, attendance
rates and love of learning in 1994 and in the years prior to founding Kidzmet, she worked in the education
industry in various capacities including brand and product management for JumpStart
educational software and in marketing for a non-traditional post-secondary certification. Once she
became a parent, she started seeing just how differently her kids learned than she did...and was
reminded how critical it is that teachers and parents “get” how each unique student likes to learn in order
for kids to become engaged, enthusiastic learners. She also started to realize how many parents
didn’t know personality-based techniques and strategies that could help their kids learn how to learn
better.
Ms. Lilienstein currently serves on the
Editorial Board of the National Afterschool Association, the Publications and Platform Committees of the
NAA, the Quality Committee of the CA Afterschool Network, and advocates for Afterschool for
All with the Afterschool Alliance. She is also a member of BOOST and ASCD. Ms. Lilienstein is also a
weekly contributor on the Total Education Network, which is syndicated on 80+ networks and
heard by more than a million people in 180 countries around the world.
At home, Jen is Mom to an extraverted seven
year-old daughter--who has already dabbled in music, swimming, gymnastics, ballet, nature, yoga
and art--and an introverted four year-old son who loves to do puzzles, build with LEGOs, examine
the lives of animals and insects, and admire anything with an engine.
You can find Jen Lilienstein here:
You can buy A Parent's Playbook for Learning here:
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