Nurturing strengths; redefining weaknesses

Mel Levine, M.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School and the cofounder of All Kinds of Minds, is one of the world's foremost proponents of understanding that children's brains aren't "one size fits all" when it comes to learning. He's written a ton of books (The Myth of Laziness, and A Mind at a Time, for example), developed a boat-load of teacher tools, and heck, he's even appeared on Oprah.

This is all to say that he's a big kahuna in the education world.

So it's big news when he speaks, and his latest utterances come to us via an interview in the September issue of Educational Leadership, a publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

It's worth a read for parents and teachers -- especially if you have a child who sometimes feels like a square peg in a round hole at school.

(Then, to see how others view his theories, take a look at this webpage from the Illinois Loop site. It's pretty harsh. But education history has shown time and again that before you fall hook, line and sinker for the latest edu-theory, consider its possible flaws.)