Recognizing each child s intellectual, emotional, and physical strengths--and teaching directly to these strengths--is key to sculpting a mind at a time, according to Dr. Mel Levine. While this flashing yellow light will not surprise many skilled educators, limited resources often prevent them from shifting their instructional gears. But to teachers and parents whose children face daily humiliation at school, the author bellows, Try harder! A professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School, Levine eloquently substantiates his claim that developmental growth deserves the same monitoring as a child s physical growth. Tales of creative, clumsy, impulsive, nerdy, intuitive, loud-mouthed, and painfully shy kids help Levine define eight specific mind systems (attention, memory, language, spatial ordering, sequential ordering, motor, higher thinking, and social thinking). Levine also incorporates scientific research to show readers how the eight neurodevelopmental...

#A Good Diagnostic Manual (2005-01-14) This book goes into great detail describing all of the potential problems a mind can have and what difficulties these problems will cause in a person s academic life. I found the book fascinating and informative. It is useful as a tool for diagnosing the reasons for a person s learning problems. It s weakness, however, is that it provides very little guidance on what you should do if you have one of these problems. Basically, the author says that the individual should try to cope until they are out of school and then find a job that matches th...

#Really, really interesting, but leaves out the importance of (2004-11-05) I really liked ",A Mind at a Time. ", It is so nice to read a book that recognizes the importance of different learning styles. Unfortunately, many children who do not fit into the ",normative", ideals that many educators are looking for. These kids are pathologoized and given an unnecessary diagnosis (e. g. ADD/ADHD). A Mind at a Time looks at this subject in a way that has been very helpful to me. I wish there was more input on parenting, but that is probably beyond the scope of this bo...

#Highly overrated (2004-07-11) Mel gave a presentation at our school a number of years ago. He was am impassioned, motivational speaker. Last year this book was required reading for all the teachers at the school where I am employed. Most of us did not read very much of it because we were put off by the book. In fact, there is a running joke among the teachers that Mel really thinks there are no lazy students. Other reviewers have mentioned the lack of literature research. Personally, I think that Howard Gardner s work on learning styles is far more useful that Levine s.

#A Mind at a Time (2004-02-23) This should be mandatory reading for everybody in the field of education and all parents of newly diagnosed chidlren with ADHD. Includes very profound statement to the effect of ",We expect our children to master Reading Writing and Math & etc. but we do not expect the samething from adult. Think about that statement.

#Finally...a common sense approach to education. (2003-10-31) Dr. Levine s landmark book does more than celebrate differences, it offers a fresh, clear-eyed, common sense view of how this country needs to educate her children. For too long public education has clung to the Ford-assembly line model, one-size-fits-all paradigm of education, and this is not going to provide a productive, cutting-edge workforce for the 21st century. This book will challenge the reader to re-think some of their long held assumptions about how children are to be education. You cannot read this book and th...