Founder, A Loveleigh Place
Leigh McCarthy
Teaching and learning with students for over 20 years.
Leigh McCarthy B.A., B.Ed., OCT, M.A.
A Loveleigh Place
A Loveleigh Place is owned and operated by Leigh McCarthy. Learning and SHARING SKILLS have always motivated Leigh as an educator and learner. She has been a passionate educator (teacher grades 1-12) and artist for over 20 years. Her passions for teaching and travel led to a career that has taken her to Thailand, Qatar, Tanzania, Japan, and back to Canada, always guided by a love for learning and an intrinsic desire to learn more! Her teaching has always been rooted in the importance of getting to know her students as people: their interests, goals, challenges, and working to meet their very individual learning needs and styles--to empower them to meet their learning goals. Differentiation and a growth mindset have been dominant themes in how she plans and presents learning material and reflections that are a part of the learning process and student achievement. The joy and excitement of being a part of various learning processes in students' lives continue to be a central motivator for her as an educator and artist. J. Leigh McCarthy - Ontario College of Teachers
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A GROWTH MINDSET
A Foundational Part of How I Teach
The Growth Mindset, identified and elaborated upon by Dr. Carol Dweck, encourages learners of all ages to honour the importance and necessity of making mistakes, in order to learn, as a vital part of the learning process. The Growth Mindset encourages learners to set individual goals and to re-think what they are capable of, by changing or being aware of their mindset. Dr. Dweck uses the terms Growth Mindset versus Fixed Mindset to help us to examine the messages that we give ourselves on the journey of learning. A person operating with a Fixed Mindset may believe that they are just not good at something. Whereas a person operating with a Growth Mindset may tell themselves that they are not good at something YET - but with practice and support - they will be!
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DIFFERENTIATING LEARNING
As an educator, one of my top priorities has always been to differentiate my instruction and evaluation strategies with students - daily. Some students are visual learners, some favour audible learning, others are kinesthetic learners. We all also have different areas of "intelligence", strengths, talents, and different abilities that Howard Gardner coined in 1983 as Multiple Intelligences. Gardner identified eight different "intelligences" or "strengths": spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, linguistic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. As an educator, it benefits all students to share a variety of learning strategies, to meet their individual strengths, various "intelligences" (Gardner), learning needs and styles, and to make learning more fun and interesting for everyone!
In the end, it is important to differentiate learning because we all have different interests, strengths, and learning styles. My essential, guiding goal: to differentiate learning/guidance geared to each student, with one-on-one instruction making this even more achievable.
In case you are interested in learning more about Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory, I have provided the link below.
Gardner's MIs are not to be confused with learning styles.
