NLP in Education

We have many students from all walks of life who come and do our NLP courses and life coaching courses. Many students want to know how to use NLP in education. NLP takes learners who you might think of as disenfranchised learner’s and gives them back the ability of being able to learn.

From an NLP point of view we believe that there are no disabled learners. We believe that every single learner has a capability and the ability to learn. They are are just simply using a inappropriate strategy or inappropriate representational system. So what do we mean and how can we utilize NLP in education? The NLP for teachers course gives some valuable information for teachers to work more effectively with learners.

How to use NLP in education.

• The NLP communication model is useful to consider when teaching. The child, student or whichever learner’s, internal representation will make a major difference in the process of them learning.

• Start from the point of view that everything you have ever seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelled or even said to yourself, is stored in your nervous system. Even though you may have consciously forgotten about it. That is really important because when we think of the notion of a child who can’t remember the right answer for a test, then the issue is not really that they don’t have the information available. It simply means that they are able to access that information.

One way to help the person is to teach them to go into the learning state. We teach the learning state during our NLP training and life coaching courses. The learning state allows us to begin to relax and in turn also to remember things really well.

How else can you use NLP in education?

That depends on how much time you have to work with the person. I think teachers and educators are very well placed to do a lot of great work with students as they spend so much time with them. The fact is that they are authority figures and as such, the teachers can easily teach students new skills alongside their normal curriculum. However that does not mean that parents can abdicate their responsibilities. Parents should take an active role in their children’s education.

• A teacher should determine whether the student is normally organised or reversed organised in regards to the eye patterns. This simply means how the child accesses information in their head. This is very easily done and can be very useful to the teacher in regards to educating the student. You may also find that a child has not chosen a dominant hemisphere. Helping the child to do so could help the child greatly.

If the child has not yet chosen a dominant hemisphere you may need to do things that go bilaterally across the mid line of the body, that is to say going back and forth. You could have them touch their left shoulder with their right hand and their right shoulder with their left hand going back and forth several times. The learning state may also synchronize both hemispheres of the brain. Giving them something to do that synchronizes both hemispheres of the brain will allow them to be able to use their perfect visual memory.

• You could teach the student the NLP spelling strategy. Spelling by simply visualizing the word as they have seen it before. Ask the child “how do you spell success?” You could break the word “success” into two syllables and write it in two different colors on different pieces of paper. S-U-C (red) on one paper and then put C-E-S-S (blue) on the other piece of paper. Then ask them to read the word several times. They say the first syllable several times and then the second syllable several times. Then have them close your eyes and spell it backwards. When they do that you will know that they are really visualizing the word and they will feel great “success” when they manage to spell it both forwards and even backwards.

The learning state and spelling strategy are really easy for you to teach to students. It takes a short period of time and usually you will get a dramatic increase in their grades. I use the learning state every day in work, presentations, when I study and even driving. The person has a much greater awareness as the peripheral vision is used, instead of just the usual foveal vision. Especially as children spend more time in front of the TV, computers and other things that limit their peripheral vision.

Foveal vision is linked to the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system. This is the ‘involuntary’ or autonomic nervous system associated with activity, adrenaline and stress. Peripheral vision is linked to parasympathetic nervous system, the part of the nervous system associated with relaxation, calmness and healing. In fact, to the extent that you are truly in the peripheral vision state, you can block anxiety or stress. The two states are physiologically incompatible and can’t be held in the same consciousness when in peripheral vision.

Other techniques useful in teaching.

• Often you will need to assist the child in getting rid anger, sadness, fear, guilt or other negative emotions like frustration. Time Line Therapy® is very useful for this and it the child can let go of these negative emotions very quickly. Many children have gone through various experiences and may been told that they are learning disabled or even stupid. Children who are learning disabled are not really stupid. Often they are simply paying attention to other things than what the teacher wants them to.

• Submodalities to help the student or child make changes. Example the use of Swish patterns to help them feel better about being in class. You may want to use dislike to like pattern with the child to assist them in changing some of their internal representations about being in class or learning.

• The Milton Model is very valuable in gaining agreement with the student or child.

• Metaphors are marvelous with kids as children love stories. Metaphors are very useful for mature students, therapy and even in business. The use of metaphors can bypass the critical faculty and help the person make new learning’s at the unconscious level.

• Using the Meta Model is useful to get really specific about certain problems or specifying their outcome.

• Anchoring can be useful to help the child or student be able to control their state and be in a positive resourceful state. Collapse anchors may be useful for getting rid of problems in school and chaining anchors could also be useful to help to get the student off procrastination and get them motivated.

• Strategies and reframing are also useful with the child when you are doing a intervention with the child and assisting them in the learning state. Of course chunking would be very useful in knowing at what level of abstraction the student needs to take in information. Are they big picture or detailed. What is their learning style?

That is briefly how I would use NLP in education. These techniques are really useful and have helped many kids that have been branded ADHD and other learning difficulties. I would suggest that teachers and educators should learn these skills. It would benefit both them and the students in a very positive way.

For more information about how you can use NLP in your teachings, please feel free to contact us. We are always happy to help.