Rocky Mount, N.C.— Dr. Mel Levine, the pediatrician whose groundbreaking approach to recognizing, understanding, and celebrating variations in the way children learn, will speak at Wesleyan’s Dunn Center for the Performing Arts on March 19 at 7:00 p.m. His talk is free and open to the public.

Reservations qualify guests for premium seating (email drlevine@rmacademy.com).

Dr. Levine, professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School in Chapel Hill, is the internationally acclaimed author of 10 books, including the New York Times No. 1 best-seller A Mind at a Time. He is also a co-founder, with financier Charles R. Schwab, of All Kinds of Minds, a non-profit institute for the study of differences in learning.

For the past 30 years, Dr. Levine has pioneered programs for evaluating children and young adults with learning, development, and/or behavioral problems. His neuro-developmental framework for understanding why children have difficulty in school provides the keys to unlocking the potential of all kinds of minds.

“Helping parents, teachers and students appreciate differences in learning is the first step; helping them celebrate the differences is the goal,” says Dr. Levine.

Publications by Dr. Levine also include A Pediatric Approach to Learning Disorders, Developmental Variation and Learning Disorders, Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, Educational Care, Keeping A Head In School, Jarvis Clutch – Social Spy, The Myth of Laziness, and Ready or Not, Here Life Comes.

Dr. Levine graduated summa cum laude from Brown University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and completed his pediatric training at The Children’s Hospital in Boston. He served as Chief of the Division of Ambulatory Pediatrics at The Children’s Hospital for 14 years. Before coming to North Carolina, he was associate professor of pediatrics at The Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Levine’s visit is sponsored by Rocky Mount Academy, the Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce, Nash Community College, and North Carolina Wesleyan College.


Read more about Dr. Levine’s ideas at www.allkindsofminds.org, which includes the following:

Most children begin their educational careers as enthusiastic learners and energetic thinkers. But before long, many of them begin to fall behind in traditional school programs because of the way their brains are "wired."

Children who are struggling present a range of issues from severe breakdowns in learning to the frustrations of those whose efforts in school far exceed their achievements. Some have brains that are wired to handle a lot of information at once. Others can only absorb and process a little information at a time. Still others must look at information many times before grasping it. Some kids' brains can recall information and skills rapidly, while others need more time to process and respond to a stimulus.

Fortunately, all kids' minds have the potential for great growth.

Too many kids struggle needlessly simply because the way in which they learn is incompatible with the way they're being taught. Schools are filled with kids who have given up on themselves and conclude that they are "stupid." It's tragic. It's also painful – painful for the student, teacher, and parent.

All of these individuals may be unaware that the "wiring" of a child's brain simply is not in sync with the demands of the situations at hand. Telling a student "You can do better..," doesn't help, particularly when he has done his best to no avail. Criticizing him for an inability to complete a particular task in a particular way, similarly, is ineffective - not to mention inappropriate. And humiliating him inadvertently, in private or in public, for circumstances beyond his control is simply hurtful and unnecessary.

Yet these types of responses to children with learning differences are all too common. The fact is that these kids often have good minds with real and obvious intellectual strengths. However, they suffer from what are often subtle dysfunctions – patterns of brain wiring that make certain aspects of learning exceedingly difficult. These children are highly vulnerable – and they're slipping through the cracks.