When it comes to learning styles, I am primarily an auditory learner with a strong visual learning aptitude as well. Fortunately for me, traditional instruction was heavy on both, and so school was never really a problem for me.
I am so auditory, though, that often times I can remember exactly where I was when I heard something of note. For example, last summer we were on our way home from staying with my mom for a month, driving in stop-and-go traffic through Chicago, its iconic skyline to our left when I snapped on the radio to listen to All Things Considered. Michelle Martin was interviewing a guy who had made a short animated film about a black dad who struggled but learned how to do his daughter's hair. Their conversation about "Hair Love" was interesting to me on several levels-- I like animated shorts, black hair is emblematic of cultural and political issues, as is a dad of any race caring for his daughter.
When the lights went down in the theater this afternoon and the first movie of the Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts came on, for a moment I was back on the Ryan Expressway with the late August sun shining off Lake Michigan to the east, feeling cautiously optimistic: my mom was recovering in rehab, and the new school year was only a couple of days away.
I returned to the present moment as the story unfolded on the screen, and when it was revealed that the little girl's mom was being treated for cancer, which was part of the reason why the hair style was so important to both daughter and dad, I couldn't help weeping, both for their heartache and mine.
I am so auditory, though, that often times I can remember exactly where I was when I heard something of note. For example, last summer we were on our way home from staying with my mom for a month, driving in stop-and-go traffic through Chicago, its iconic skyline to our left when I snapped on the radio to listen to All Things Considered. Michelle Martin was interviewing a guy who had made a short animated film about a black dad who struggled but learned how to do his daughter's hair. Their conversation about "Hair Love" was interesting to me on several levels-- I like animated shorts, black hair is emblematic of cultural and political issues, as is a dad of any race caring for his daughter.
When the lights went down in the theater this afternoon and the first movie of the Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts came on, for a moment I was back on the Ryan Expressway with the late August sun shining off Lake Michigan to the east, feeling cautiously optimistic: my mom was recovering in rehab, and the new school year was only a couple of days away.
I returned to the present moment as the story unfolded on the screen, and when it was revealed that the little girl's mom was being treated for cancer, which was part of the reason why the hair style was so important to both daughter and dad, I couldn't help weeping, both for their heartache and mine.
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