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“I’m not a trainer. You train monkeys. I’m an educator. I give you the tools and skills to make it on your own,” says Mark Kenney, lead instructor at New England Crane School.
Mark has excelled in the field of education despite his early struggles in school. It was not until high school, when diagnosed with dyslexia, that Mark was able to address his difficulties with rigid learning models and classwork, receiving the care and the tools to make it and succeed on his own.
Traditional education has left many of us unaware of our natural talents and strengths. Where the ability to test well and rote memorization are qualifiers of intelligence, those of us who think a little differently are often either labeled as difficult students or ignored altogether.
The human brain is naturally wired to develop language through speech but reading and writing require different connections in the brain. Dyslexia is a neurobiological condition, thought to be genetic, and a major factor in people experiencing difficulties with reading, speech and phonic recognition.
According to the International Dyslexia Association, 15-20% of the population has a language-based learning disability…70-80% of those diagnosed have deficits in reading.
Dyslexia in school can often feel like a losing battle, where our “abilities” are measured by reading comprehension, memorization and math skills. Without the proper instruction early on in life, one may think less of their abilities to learn and succeed in certain careers.
In fact, polls suggest 97% of people view dyslexia negatively.
Yet it is these unique students and their out-of-the-box thinking that we are coming to understand not as a disability but simply divergent of the norm, and carries with it benefits that, as Cambridge University suggests, are highly adaptive and even essential in the evolution of our species.
In fact, people with dyslexia often have above average IQ’s and can carry out intricate and unique combinations of ideas leading to innovation and heightened creativity. Often because of their need to overcompensate in school, they learn persistence, empathy and excel in leadership and teamwork.
In the trades, these are skills not to be overlooked. Their “big picture” thinking and adaptive problem-solving strategies make these neurodivergent thinkers excellent candidates for many areas of construction and engineering.
It was indeed this struggle with schoolwork and his eventually getting an appropriate education for his learning style that made Mark an excellent candidate for training other out-of-the-box thinkers. “It’s not about the actual content, but the skills to navigate that content” he says. Mark makes sure to use all the senses and different areas of the brain, not just reading and writing, to promote holistic understanding.
If you’ve been to one of Mark’s classes, you’ll know he has a way of making people laugh, uses Jackie Chan references when learning hand signals, and sometimes busts out dance moves to address structure and stability equations.
“It’s about engaging the senses, getting the right and left hemisphere working together and making those neural connections” he says, by whatever means works best for the individual.
This might mean writing something over a few times, as a way of igniting muscle memory, or drawing out their ideas, as people in the trades are often very tactile. “These guys can figure out how to run any kind of machine” he says, “it’s crazy what they can do and do well.”
Mark recommends students really take their time learning new material, tackling only one thing at a time. As dyslexics can often have trouble focusing, taking a big project apart into smaller components can feel less overwhelming.
To employers he says the same thing: give them time to learn new skills. This will not only lead to a more relaxed (and therefore cool-headed) employee, but can also lead to innovation and the creative solutions that those with dyslexia are so well known for.
“Give them the opportunity to try things and do things well…focus on their strengths, not their weaknesses,” he recommends.
Mark is no stranger to getting on other people’s level and finding out what works for them, and is always available to go over problems individually. It’s this kind of dedicated attention that fosters students’ unique skill sets and helps them face challenges without judgement, resulting in the confidence to tackle that final exam and any project down the road.
Research referenced in this article was sourced from The International Dyslexia Association and The Landmark School’s blog which can be found at www.landmarkschool.org |
