Islander Gary Phillips wants students to have a better time in school than he did.
An educator who brings 40 years of experience to his upcoming talk at Bainbridge Commons Feb. 24, Phillips chose the field in reaction to his own schooling in a small Indiana town.
“My own education was not good,” Phillips said, “and I think that’s what sent me into the field. Early on I felt stupid and so I did stupid things. I learned I could manipulate the class, and that was my defense mechanism.”
Phillips says he was so frustrated by sixth grade that he pulled out all his eyelashes and eyebrows in class.
“You can imagine what that was like for my parents,” Phillips said. “They sent me to a minister. That didn’t help.”
Finally Phillips was referred to a psychologist who helped Phillips see that “I wasn’t stupid, I wasn’t weird. It was the situation that was weird.”
Later, Phillips would discover that he was a classic “kinesthetic-tactile learner,” a student who learns better by doing than by reading.
After years of frustration, he found a class that engaged his right-brained approach, a high school jazz music class.
Phillips seized on his success, becoming so expert on the string bass that he earned his way through college by playing jazz. And the young man launched a career from the unfortunate start when he decided to become a teacher.
“I decided I wanted to go into education,” Phillips said, “I think I had a lot of anger.”
As soon as Phillips began teaching in Indianapolis in 1972, his particular talent for reaching both gifted and hard-to-teach students emerged.
“Teachers would pick the most difficult students and send them to me,” Phillips said.
Within a few years, Phillips had structured his approach into a program called “Learning Unlimited” at Indianapolis’ North Central High School.
“I really believe that every student is gifted and talented at something,” Phillips said.
Later, two high schools he headed won national awards for gifted and talented programming and for work with delinquent youth.
In the course of four decades, Phillips, who earned a doctorate in education from Indiana’s Ball State University in 1977, has been a teacher, counselor, probation officer, school administrator and university professor. Phillips’ broad view of the field includes teaching and research positions at the elementary, middle and secondary levels.
A Fulbright scholar assigned to work with public schools in New Guinea, Phillips pioneered the islands’ first alternative school.
Author of 11 books, Phillips draws on both his theoretical and on-the-front-lines teaching background to translate current brain research into teaching practice.
Adaptation
He promotes what he terms “differentiated instruction,” an approach promoting flexibility in teaching, with constant adaptation to a particular student’s style of learning.
Through the Eli Lily Endowment, he studies the effect on rural schools of the increase of methamphetamine labs.
But education theory came home again, Phillips says, in a very personal application: he and his wife, kindergarten teacher Mary Phillips, have educated their four children in Montessori schools.
“The brain research supports the multi-sensory approach,” Phillips said. “That’s why I like Montessori so much. I was a principal in public schools at the time, but I think the point wasn’t that one was better than the other.
“It’s that we need options – one destination, many roads.”
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Leaps and Bounds Montessori, Montessori Country School and Voyager Montessori Elementary School events celebrate National Montessori Education Week:
• Bainbridge Public Library and Eagle Harbor Book Co. display Montessori books Feb. 22-28
• Guest speaker Gary Phillips on “A Conspiracy of Love” 7 p.m. Feb. 24 at Bainbridge Commons. The two-hour workshop features a wide variety of techniques for parent-teacher collaboration to help students discover ways to learn. Free and open to the public. Call 780-5661 for more information.
• Open House 10 a.m. – 12. p.m. Feb. 22 at Voyager Montessori Elementary School. Parent Information Night, 7 p.m. Feb 27.
