Learning Styles

The first thing that struck me when the above results popped up on the screen was that I am not musical. I actually cannot think of anything I would rather not do than play a musical instrument. The first instrument I played was the recorder and I was so bad at it the teacher made me sit in the back and not actually play, just act like I was playing. Strike one. Second, I played the clarinet and my lips swelled horribly and my teacher made me play it so much that they bled. If my husband ( a huge music fan and an incredible musician) leaves I turn off the music. So do not pull out your guitar if you want my brain in class...
Interpersonal-100 percent. I love committees, groups, cooperation, leadership. I was a Brownie, a Girl Scout, a devoted soccer and lacrosse player (team sport), in drama. I love being with people, and I learn better from others, not so much from books. One teacher I remember in particular was my French teacher in high school. He taught the exact same way every day. He would start by speaking rapid French at us until we felt confused. Then he would introduce to us what he had just said and write the vocabulary on the board. We would rapidly write the vocabulary (and conjugations, etc.) in our notebooks while he simultaneously yelled at us to stand up one by one and repeat what he had said at the beginning. it was almost always impossible, we were singled out daily and ground into the ground if we did not know what we were saying or had the wrong accent and he was just plain mean. I wanted to learn the "language of Love". I had so many romantic notions about French, and then he came into my life. It was exactly the wrong method of teaching for me.
And then there was my Literature of Vietnam class in college. This class to me was perfect. Our teacher engaged us in many discussions, we shared freely, had assigned study groups, and group projects. He allowed us to choose our focus and we were able to focus on this throughout the course. He was amazing, and Vietnam Lit. remains one of my favorite genres today, despite the horrifying content.

What should our focus be to try and incorporate everyone?
I think the key to this must be allowing for the students to have a certain amount of choice. I often start the year in fairly rigid literature circles (I choose the students, the books, the activities). I then give a little more slack (they choose the group, I choose the book). It keeps going like that until some students are off in a corner reading their own book, creating their own goals and making up their own projects and another group has taken over the big group desk and vociferously discussing the book and deicing what they should do next. I see a big improvement in attitudes toward reading at the end of the year when the students have made their own decisions. I have been trying over the last few years to step away from always doing group work (because I am so interpersonal I think they all are too..). But I have realized that some students really do prefer to work on their own, and what they produce is quality. I have no idea how to relate or add music into my classroom, but I have never discouraged a project if it is musical.