Michael Skibra, BA MEd

President

Michael  Skibra, BA MEd

Place

Digital Marketing International

Location

United States

Contact

I got involved with the Spectrum in 1978 when Muska and Sara conducted a workshop in the school district I was teaching. I taught a foreign language class and a class called “Communications” in which students learned about various media and how that media was used in everyday life. What was intriguing to me was whether it would be possible to incorporate some of the Styles in beginning foreign languages classes so that the students would feel more comfortable with their learning abilities. I saw in the Spectrum the ability to focus on the individuals progress while still maintaining some of the necessary repetitive nature of the lessons. It worked. Students were responsive to the various styles and recognized soon how they could use the Styles to their learning advantage. For example, rather than review the daily homework (and there was a daily homework assignment) as a class, every class began with a personal review of each assignment so that if the student had a question, it could be reviewed individually. If I noticed that multiple students had an issue in accomplishing the homework, I knew then too that I could review the issue in greater depth during regular classroom time.

While foreign language learning is a lot of rote and repetition, “Communications” was an open field where students were able to explore more in-depth areas that interested them in the fields of television, radio, print media and marketing. Without the Spectrum it would have been impossible to make these areas as appealing to the students – and I might add to the teacher. Several years after teaching in the classroom using the Spectrum, I left teaching for private enterprise – I am a manufacturer's representative in the computer / computer video industry. In my current capacity I continue to use multiple styles so that adult sales and technical representatives at the companies I work with learn about the products I provide them – so that they can sell them and enrich their lives, and mine. ;)

Mike graduated from Rutgers University with a double major in Comparative Literature and German. He started teaching junior high school in the Hopewell Valley Regional School District in 1974 and left in 1982. He received his MEd in 1978 from The Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. When he left public school teaching, Mike implemented much of the Spectrum in teaching computer sales and technical support to resellers throughout the USA and later the world. He has a keen appreciation on how using the Spectrum in non-school environments is mutually beneficial and profitable.

 

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