Education
We are driven by the belief that students can achieve more when they are compatible with their teachers and guidance counselors. By assigning students to the best resources for their individual needs, you create positive learning environments by design rather than chance.
Our online real-time system provides a way for educators to learn about their students' preferred communication, temperament, and learning/work styles. Educators can apply our data in many ways, such as mapping human resources to create the best atmosphere for students and teachers to connect on a personal level.
You will find a number of suggestions below that may help you increase effective communication:
Team Building
Faculty and staff can benefit from gaining further insight about their coworkers. When individuals better understand one another, the workplace often becomes a more enjoyable environment. This can lead to enhanced employee satisfaction and decreased turnover.
Group Work
When students in a group are vastly incompatible, the focus may be taken away from the class activity and transferred to the disruption. Connectivity profiles can be used to create groups that will be more effective and productive.
Additionally, connectivity profiles can be used to create groups comprised of students who would not generally choose to work together. By gaining opportunities to work with a variety of classmates and deal with uncomfortable or difficult situations, students may develop more sophisticated social skills.
Connectivity profiles can be used to assign students to group projects according to their similarities or differences.
Grouping By Similarities
Grouping students according to their similarities can prove time-efficient when assigning groups or sub-groups to work on a specific part of a project. In some instances, students are most challenged when working with peers who share their strengths and weaknesses. If a teacher chooses students of similar profiles to work on a project together from start to finish, there will be areas where the group will excel and others where they will struggle immensely. For instance, without Bottom Liner teammates, a group of Energizers will likely struggle with creating final products from their ingenious ideas.
When you choose to group students according to their similarities, you should expect to provide significant support. Ahead of time, you may inform the individual groups to pay specific attention to brainstorming, following through, or whatever difficulty you predict may ensue, as particular to the given group. On the contrary, you may choose not to inform the students that they may struggle with certain areas, and just provide support as necessary.
Grouping By Differences
Research has shown that grouping students according to their differences can be quite beneficial, especially for cooperative learning groups and decision-making. Groups comprised of students with diverse personality types benefit from the mix of different styles. If a group is comprised of students who have complementary strengths and weaknesses, students can learn from one another.
The most interpersonally challenging teams are those comprised of students whose profiles suggest very little compatibility (eg. a High Bridge Builder student and a Low Bridge Builder student).
Seating Charts
Connectivity By Design™ profiles can be of great benefit when designing seating charts for a classroom. The instructor may strategically seat a shy, timid student next to an approachable, friendly peer. Additionally, the teacher can separate the students who experience difficulty with focusing for long periods of time, thus minimizing the likelihood that these students will group together and create major distractions.
While teachers often design seating charts strategically, they cannot do so until they know the personalities, strengths, and weaknesses of the students. Connectivity profiles allow teachers to access this data before the school year begins, allowing for strategic classroom design on the first day of class.
Classroom Management
On-task time and discipline can become problems when a teacher's style differs from the students'. Strict, impersonal discipline can be emotionally troubling to a sensitive child, while kind reminders may have no impact on a student with a strong determination. While many teachers can adjust their management style, this task becomes easier when the instructor knows the best way to handle a specific student or group of students.
Lesson Planning
An instructor's most natural way to teach is the way that person learns. However, students learn and express their knowledge in a variety of different ways. When a teacher better understands students' preferences, lesson plans can be designed to address the different learning styles.
Self-Discovery
When students gain insight to their own preferences, they can learn in the ways that are easiest and most natural for them. Young people also benefit from an increased understanding of others' personalities. Interpersonal interactions are more comfortable when individuals understand each other's preferences.
Tutoring
Students who seek out after-school help often find it difficult to comprehend class material. One-on-one private tutors can function as valuable resources who help students finally make sense out of complex concepts. When tutoring proves unsuccessful, students may ultimately give up on themselves, thinking that their last-resort option failed. Better student-tutor matches may increase the effectiveness of tutoring sessions.
Homerooms
Students mentally prepare for their schooldays while in homeroom. Proper student-homeroom teacher alignment can help create a positive beginning to students' schooldays, thereby increasing positive mental energy towards academics.
Extra-curricular Activities
Students who participate in extra-curricular activities feel more connected to the school. Compatibility profiles are useful in activities where students must work together to reach common goals, leading to increased satisfaction with the extra-curricular experience.
Peer Relationships and Effective Social Skills
Peer relationships are impacted by compatibility. Where more compatibility exists, friendships will often form. Oftentimes, however, people misinterpret those of a different style. Intentions, behaviors, and words can be misread, leading to two individuals "not liking" one another. Young people can easily make this mistake, assuming that they do not like those who they do not relate to or understand.
When students gain a better understanding of the various styles, they should feel more comfortable with working with different people. Guidance counselors can use the 4 compatibility styles to arrange enjoyable activities that help students understand different perspectives.
Be sure to reinforce how students can use their new understanding of the 4 styles to look at people from a new perspective. Help students recognize that they may be inclined toward a particular style, but they should use their new awareness to try to interact with people of other styles more often. Challenge students to work on projects with classmates who they would not generally choose, or to speak with peers who they only know as acquaintances.
Interpersonal Problem Solving and Conflict Resolution
Familiarization with the connectivity styles can aid in interpersonal problem solving and conflict resolution. Frustration can occur when people think that they have done everything possible to please someone else, yet they receive little or no gratitude. This can blow up into a larger issue, resulting in conflict. By better understanding others' perspectives, people can better determine how to satisfy themselves and others.
At-risk Student Identification
The Grant Company, LLC believes that all 4 styles are equally positive and valuable. In many instances, however, school perceptions of intelligence may correlate with traits that are characteristic of the Thinker style.
While higher intelligence and IQ scores are not linked to any one style, school culture tends to look more highly upon students who exhibit Thinker traits, such as organization, punctuality, and attention to detail.
Please note that we are not minimizing the intelligence of low-scoring Thinkers, who are often very smart. In addition, we are not saying that they have bad study skills. Essentially, their natural habits, and even their strengths, can be misconstrued as detrimental to their education in an environment where high-scoring Thinkers are often in charge.
For this reason, students who score low on Thinker may need some additional attention. These students may not learn and exhibit their knowledge in the ways that school culture expects them to do so. To succeed in school, these students must learn to conform to a Thinker-dominated educational system. They would likely benefit from "study skills" classes that focus on organization.
School Climate
School climate should improve when students and teachers experience higher levels of productivity, achievement, and positive relationships.
As an additional service, The Grant Company, LLC offers environmental surveys. These serve to identify specific issues that students, faculty, and staff value, such as safety, so administrators can address any challenges. The information gathered by the surveys may show that a particular issue has been fully addressed and resolved or that a new issue has arisen.
The environmental survey serves as a benchmark to determine the current level of student and faculty comfort, connectivity, and satisfaction. As additional improvements are made, guidance counselors can see the progress by comparing current and past survey results.
"Teachers must motivate and work with the kids. Often, very bright kids are not...unmotivated, they are just turned off of the subject completely by a teacher that cannot reach them."