According to Types of Learners from Lyceum Books, there are four primary learning styles. These include visual, auditory, read-write, and kinesthetic.
In classrooms, teachers work hard to provide a variety of these methods to educate the curriculum they are tasked with.
It is a disadvantage to the learner when one of these primary methods of learning is lessened due to cuts that allow for student engagement like kinesthetic and visual.
The news about Fisheries and Oceans Canada cutting the Salmonid Enhancement Program will have a detrimental affect in the way students that live near water-sheds engage with them.
In Houston we are greatly affected by the Bulkley Valley water-sheds and in-classroom fishery tanks provide students with visual and kinesthetic that supplements the auditory and read-write portion of what they receive in classrooms. I have a fond memory from elementary school around the life cycle of tadpoles. We had some in our Grade 1 classroom and would on occasion visit the duck pond to release them and engage visually with the “real-world content” of what we were learning.
There is a form of disconnection when learning in a classroom. A subtle displacement that seeps into the retention area of learning students and states, “in here I learn, out there I engage.”
So, what we learn is actually a little less real to us. It’s like downloading music without actually getting to listen to it.
By bridging this gap in classroom so that students not only retain what they are learning because they are engaging with the content, more than just being downloaded with it, creates a greater form of education and future engagement with the way in which people consciously choose to interact with the content of the “real-world.”
I’d personally would hate to see the fish tanks in our school districts classrooms of Houston potentially be taken away due to the need to relocate funding costs.
These people that we are educating are going to be the future decision makers in how humans interact with our water-sheds.
And whether they go into logging, operate a fish hatchery, or write an article, they will have an impact on the conscious engagement on how people prioritize the importance of the water-sheds we all rely on.