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Fall 2003
Connecting Minds
We recently spoke with Diane Schneider, a member of the All Kinds of Minds New York Regional Council*. Schneider is also Founder and CEO of the Evergreen Foundation in Bedford, New York, which supports initiatives serving students struggling with cognitive, emotional, and social development.
What do you find compelling about All Kinds of Minds' approach to learning?
Each parent sends a child to school with the perception that his child is "whole" and worthy of enthusiasm and optimism as he seeks success. This perception is often compromised when external sets of criteria for success are imposed on the child. All Kinds of Minds focuses on seeking out and engaging a child's strengths and clarifying the boundaries of specific learning difficulties. Parents experience renewed optimism, accompanied by a cathartic recognition of their child, and the family feels reunited. The All Kinds of Minds approach also creates a sense of community between the child, his family, and professionals working with him – a tremendous amount of
synergy, well being, and optimism is released by the method's shared language and perspective.
What are important messages that All Kinds of Minds should share with people?
The Institute has made tremendous progress in communicating how shared language facilitates the understanding and management of each student's learning profile. It must continue to reach out to students, parents, educators, and professionals with the message of a promising future.
All Kinds of Minds also needs to continue to encourage individuals to take heart in recognizing their own "learning profiles" – to embrace with enthusiasm, optimism, and humor their own
learning strengths and weaknesses.
What do you perceive as the challenges we face in helping children who are struggling to learn?
In our current system, teachers feel pressure to prepare students for standardized
performance testing, the results of which are used to gauge the educator's success. This way, we lose an educator's time and opportunity to discover each child's unique strengths. We need to help policy makers appreciate the productive potential of teaching students to manage their unique
learning abilities.
*The NY Regional Council is a volunteer group appointed by All Kinds of Minds to promote and support the New York Center for All Kinds of Minds.
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