By Hook or By Crook

My name is Kyle Ervin. I'm a 44 year old father of four and have been happily married to my wife, Brynn, for almost 18 years. My wife was the teacher in the family until 9 years ago when, after giving birth to our fourth, she suffered a massive pulmonary embolism followed by cardiac arrest. She was flatlined for 90 minutes, then was in a coma for a month and when she did come out of it she was left with a permanent brain injury. So, she couldn't teach anymore, and I couldn't keep the job I had which required quite a bit of time, as well as travel. I finally got talked into taking the CBEST so I could substitute teach and learned that I actually really enjoy it. So here I am. Oh yeah, I wrote a book too.

My philosophy of education is really rather simple. By hook or by crook, I aim to enable all of my students to become better writers and better readers. Basically what this means is that I hold no teaching method or teaching style as sacrosanct. I understand that all of my students learn in different ways, so incorporating a multitude of strategies into my lesson plans helps me to accommodate a multitude of learning styles and abilities.

According to the Metaras Personality Page I am INFP or ENFP and my personality best matches with the job of Psychotherapist.




According to the Index of Learning Styles I'm ...

I'll be entirely honest and say that I'm not entirely sure how these results affect my teaching (at least not with any great certainty). I think the 90% match with the job of psychotherapist is a bit funny, but also fitting. I often feel like a psychotherapist as I try to help students work through their personal, family, and other issues so that they can get past their fear of failure and find their voice in their writing. 

I also know that most of my students are more sequential, or linear, in their learning styles whereas I tend to be more global or non-linear. This means that I will teach them various strategies for writing that are often different from strategies that I tend to use when I write. For example, when it comes to brainstorming their topic, I will provide a graphic organizer in traditional outline format as well as a graphic organizer for a mind map. They get to choose the strategy that best works for them.