(Tom Buck's Personal Profile)


    About My Family:

    ...let me tell you a little about myself...

    Although I was born in Escanaba, Michigan during March of 1961, I grew up in Duluth, Minnesota. Where I currently reside with my wife and son in an area called Chester Park.

    Work for me includes teaching, research, and antiques. With a Ph.D. in education, I am an instructor and Department Chair of Computer Science at Marshall School. I am also conducting an on-going research project on learning styles and distance learning. In addition, as a part-time conservator for a regional art museum, I do preservation and restoration work on antique Japanese art objects.

    My primary interest, apart from my son, Samuel, and Andrea, my wife, is old Japanese swords, which I have been studying and collecting since 1975.

    Among other things, Andrea, Sam and I enjoy reading to each other, cycling the Munger Trail, cross-country skiing in Hartley Field, traveling, chaperoning Marshall's prom, and learning Hebrew.

     


    A RELATIVE HISTORY OF
    MY LEARNING STYLES AND COGNITIVE ABILITIES

    Early in my college experience I faced a severe illness resulting in a large cranial abscess which placed extreme pressure on my left frontal lobe. Not only did it jeopardize my life, but it also directly affected my short-term memory and speech centers. After the abscess was removed, I had to literally relearn how to communicate and learn through speech therapy, adopting new cognitive strategies, and adapting to meet new challenges.

    Although it has been nearly thirty years since my "recovery," I am still occasionally frustrated by haunting remnants of these "restrictions." When I am tired it becomes more difficult to remember or associate names with ideas, places, or people; I become more divergent in my thought process, as well as impatient with or easily distracted by visual disorder. It's not that the knowledge is absent, there just seems to be a temporary disconnect.

    As part of my cognitive recovery, I needed to adopt several learning compensation strategies. I was also given a fascinating battery of learning style and cognitive ability exams, assessments and inventories (these included: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale -R; the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; the Gregorc Style Delineator; the Oltman, Raskin and Witkin's Embedded Figures Test; and, the Swassing/Barbe Modality Index). In fact, the greatest challenge for me was a shift from being a mixed Audio/Kinesthetic leaner to primarily a Visual learner. When I read the SBMI Visual Modality description it's like looking at a mental Polaroid of my psyche. I have posted the above listed assessment and inventory results below.




    Learning Compensation Strategies*

    Strategy

    Components

    Study and Performance Strategies

  • Note taking
  • Test-taking preparation
  • Time management
  • Monitoring daily, weekly, and monthly assignments and activities
  • Using weekly and monthly organizers, chunking assignments into workable parts
  • Written expression
  • Reading
  • Mathematical processing

    • Cognitive/Learning Strategies

  • Memory strategies such as mnemonics, rehearsal, association and visualization
  • Chunking information into smaller units for mastery

    • Compensation Supports

  • Use of computers & word processing

    • *These were adopted in part from "Whitmore, J. (1980). Giftedness, conflict, and underachievement. Boston: Allyn and Bacon."




    Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R)*

  • verbal IQ = 120
  • performance IQ = 139
  • full-scale IQ = 133

    • *This exam was taken in 1982, since then there have been significant changes and reversions of the WAIS, including the creation of the WAIS-R IN (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised as a Neuropsychological Instrument), which may have been more appropriate considering my condition.

     


     

    On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I was type cast as an
    INTJ - "Introversion, iNtuition Thinking, Judging".

    The characteristics frequently associated with INTJ are:

    "Usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes. In fields that appeal to them, they have a fine power to organize a job and carry it through with or without help. Skeptical, critical, independent, determined, sometimes stubborn. Must learn to yield less important points to win the most important."
    -Description from Form G Self-Scorable (Revised)

     



    On the Gregorc Style Delineator I was type cast as
    Concrete Random (CR) Dominant

    The characteristics frequently associated with CR are:

    Dominant CR learners are able to:
    • Use insight to skip details and find the big picture
    • Use intuition to uncover lies and deception
    • Stand independently of others thoughts, work and deed
    • To risk being different
    • Create new ideas, approaches and products
    • Conform to established rules and procedures if they are personally acceptable
    • Function well in unstructured, open-ended activities
    • Thrive in conditions that offer choice, chance, challenge and change
    		Dominant CR learners dislike:
    • Prescribed, step-by-step cookbook procedures
    • Communal teamwork
    • Details, routine procedures, politically-correct activities, and plans that lack excitement
    • Being reprimanded by people they consider to be incompetent, hypocritical or stuck-in-their ways
    • Having their intuitive flashes and insights demeaned
    Dominant CR learners expect:
    • Concrete examples and abstract ideas to help launch unconventional thoughts and products
    • Open minded teachers who serve both as knowledgeable instructors and guides for their independent work
    • Established basic requirements and provisions for freedom to experiment beyond them
    • Activities that promote and reward their curiosity, inventiveness, competitiveness and need to explore
    • Stimulus-rich environments that include interesting people and multiple resources available on-call
    		Dominant CR learners fear:
    • Being mediocre, average, and unnoticed; Being unable to shine; Losing in competition
    • Being trapped by fixed routines that restrict freedom
    • Being involved in meaningless activities
    • Being governed by restrictive and controlling individuals and group
    Dominant CR learners want:
    • Recognition, appreciation, respect and accolades
    • Ethical, just, genuine, flexible and tolerant teachers
    • Activities that fit their ways of dealing with the ever-changing world that they experience
    		Dominant CR learners prefer the following media:
    • Mini-lectures
    • Discussions
    • Games
    • Simulations
    • Independent study
    Adapted from: http://www.smuhsd.k12.ca.us/chs/instructionaltoolkit/learning_styles/learning_modalitiesgregorc_mind_styles2.html

     



    On the Oltman, Raskin and Witkin's Embedded Figures Test (EFT) I was type cast as
    Field Independent (FI)

    The characteristics frequently associated with FI are:

    • Analytical
    • Generates structure
    • Internally directed
    • Inattentive to social cues
    • Philosophical
    • Cognitive
    • Individualistic
    • Distant in social relations
    • Intrapersonal
    • Reserved
    • Aloof
    • Experimental
    • Generates own hypotheses
    • Conceptually oriented
    • Acquires information to fit conceptual scheme
    • Represents concepts through analysis
    • Less affected by format/structure
    • Impersonal orientation
    • Insensitive to social undercurrents
    • Ignores external stress

     



    On the Swassing/Barbe Modality Index (SBMI) I was type cast with
    Visual Modality (VM) as my greatest differential

    The characteristics frequently associated with VM are:

    LEARNING STYLES Learns by seeing; watching demonstrations
    READING Likes description; sometimes stops reading to stare into space and imagine scene; intense concentration
    SPELLING Recognizes words by sight; relies on configuration of words
    HANDWRITING Tends to be good, particularly when young; spacing and size are good; appearance is important
    MEMORY Remembers faces, forgets names; writes things down, takes notes
    IMAGERY Vivid imagination; thinks in pictures, visualizes in detail
    DISTRACTIBILITY Generally unaware of sounds; distracted by visual disorder or movement
    PROBLEM SOLVING Deliberate; plans in advance; organizes thoughts by writing them; lists problems
    RESPONSE TO PERIODS OF INACTIVITY Stares; doodles; finds something to watch
    RESPONSE TO NEW SITUATIONS Looks around; examines structure
    EMOTIONALITY Somewhat repressed; stares when angry; cries easily, beams when happy; facial expression is a good index of emotion
    COMMUNICATION Quiet; does not talk at length; becomes impatient when extensive listening is required; may use words clumsily; describes without embellishment; uses words such as see, look, etc.
    GENERAL APPEARANCE Neat, meticulous, likes order; may choose not to vary appearance
    RESPONSE TO THE ARTS Not particularly responsive to music; prefers the visual arts; tends not to voice appreciation of art of any kind, but can be deeply affected by visual displays; focuses on details and components rather than the work as a whole
    Used with permission of Zaner-Bloser, Inc.

     


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