This post is a kick-off to a new series, Ways to Think about Learning, where we’ll explore some foundational theories about how people learn that have shaped education. On the ‘must discuss’ list are Bloom’s Taxonomy, Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, Friere’s Critical Pedagogy, Bruner’s Spiral Curriculum, Bell Hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, Maria Montisorri’s methods, and, here today, Kallick and Costa’s 16 Habits of Mind.

This list is not exhaustive, by any means, but a lasting understanding of these core principles allows any educator to make research-backed decisions while planning and teaching, while putting their own, individual touch on everything. Working to internalize these theories isn’t meant to make any educator feel like they need to follow all of the old ‘playbooks’ – that wouldn’t be much fun or true to who you are as a teacher. Rather, it’s in understanding these theories that you can apply them in creative, unique ways that you feel will work for you and will work for your students.

Ideas for Big, Hopeful Lessons

A lot of people fall asleep at night thinking about their hopes or their worries – but not teachers. Teachers fall asleep thinking about the next day’s lesson. Or, better yet, that big lesson that they hope to pull off on some day during the year. The one that needs space, time, trust, and real, enduring learning to get off the ground. Knowing these theories in and out allows you to apply them to that big idea you have, to carve it into something specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely – as they say – and to use the study of generations to make it tight, to bring it alive.

So why start with the 16 Habits of Mind to help you get there?

These habits are digestible, grounded, and easily applicable to the classroom. Because they’re broken up into bite-sized pieces, you can choose your favorite today and try to integrate it into a learning segment later this week. On the grandest scale, whole curriculums are organized by this framework, and on a smaller scale, you can wrap in one, two, or three to any unit. If you’re looking to bring in Social-Emotional Learning to your classroom once or twice per week, but aren’t sure where to start, you’ve got a launchpad for 16 weeks, right here.

What are the 16 Habits of Mind?

Here’s a rundown of Kallick and Costa’s 16 Habits of Mind – sixteen modes of thinking that help us (and students) open our minds, slow ourselves down, and ultimately create work using all of our potential – with less stress and more joy. I love these habits and think that any school could use them as guiding principles to teach more than just content. On a webinar with Dr. Bena Kallick and Dr. Arthur Costa not too long ago, I saw firsthand the joy with which they developed the habits, and I share them with you today in that spirit.

Today, we’ll explore six of the habits. Each is broad yet impactful in our everyday lives, so we'll look at them through three  lenses:  ‘what it means,’ ‘what it looks like in the classroom,’ and ‘what it looks like in everyday life.’ When discussing what each means, we’ll be looking at how  scholarship around the 16 Habits of Mind has described them.

As educators, what the habits look like in the classroom is key. We know that, because our students are so different, while two children may look to be acting in nearly the same way, there are myriad influences on each of them. For any single student, a teacher can ask herself: Is it a good day? Is it a bad day? Do I see progress? Educators are keen to see these small shifts.

Last, we’ll consider what each habit ‘looks like in everyday life’ because the principles are universal in nature. The 16 habits carry significant relevance outside of the classroom, which is one reason they’ve been so widely adopted inside schools for decades.

Today, we’ll explore a few of them →

Persisting

• What it means: Not giving up or letting tedium or frustration set you off from seeing a small or large task through.
• What it looks like in the classroom: Students try once, then try again, use reference materials resourcefully to figure something out, advocate for the help they need, or try a new way of approaching a problem. It’s important for students to know that not being able to do something the first time simply means there’s more to figure out, not that they’re ‘not smart enough’.
• What it looks like in everyday life: A persistent person is a person who doesn’t hang up the phone after being on hold for 15 minutes; who does choose to cook the same recipe five times to get it just the way they want it. Sure, it’s also the marathon runner or the entrepreneur, but persistence shows up in smaller, more common moments that impact our everyday lives,  just as much as the ‘big’ moments.

Managing Impulsivity

• What it means: This suggests slowing down, taking a breath, thinking it through, determining your options, and choosing the best one available in the moment. It’s the opposite of living through ‘knee-jerk’ reactions or a lack of self-awareness.
• What it looks like in the classroom: Students are aware of procedures and protocols, and take them into account before taking action. A student who may have challenges managing their own behavior might get a little bit more reflective each day or more able to manage their emotions with strategies that are explicitly taught. One time, I taught a student about a specific breathing technique² well known in yoga that he could try when he became angry, which was often. For months afterwards, I’d see him take a step away from whatever was frustrating him and practice the simple technique. He wanted to be able to calm himself down, because feeling out of control feels awful. Kids want to be able to manage their impulsivity, but some kids, for varying reasons, they need to be explicitly taught strategies to help do that.
• What it looks like in everyday life: Well-adjusted adults practice impulse management throughout each day, right? Think of how many moments you’ve “self-edited” today, regulated your behavior or speech for the greater good. Good teachers, in particular, are masters of managing their own behavior – taking a deep breath is the first step in any classroom management plan. We know that adults who can’t manage their own impulsivity move through the world with a lot more distress than others – and that's all the more reason to help students who struggle here.

Thinking About Your Thinking (Metacognition)

• What it means: This one is fascinating. Metacognition is the process of being aware of the thinking that your mind is doing. It’s being able to backtrack in your mind, step-by-step, to understand how your mind got to the place it’s in.
• What it looks like in the classroom: Teachers are constantly working through metacognition. Any “think-aloud” is a practice of sharing the process of our thoughts with students, so that students come to understand that learning is not “I know” or “I don’t know”, but rather a proocess of figuring out how to figure something out. Students tend to have a hard time with metacognition, often responding to prompts to explain their thinking with a shrug and an “I don’t know, I just know it”. With thoughtful practice, students can come to be able to explain their thought-process – and that’s when short-term learning starts to become internalized, enduring understanding because they can take themselves from Point A to Point B.
• What it looks like in everyday life: Metacognition is a matter of “me, myself, and I”. It’s closely related to awareness – how connected are you to yourself throughout the day? Are you on auto-pilot, unable to see how or why you end up in a certain mindset, or, are you present enough in each moment to work backwards and understand the road your mind took to end up where it is? It takes practice, and no one is perfect in this regard.

Listening with Understanding and Empathy

• What it means: I love Kallick and Costa’s definition for this habit: “Devoting mental energy to another person’s thoughts and ideas.”¹ What a simple yet profound idea. When we think about our closest loved ones – friends and family who we keep close to our hearts because they see us, they listen – those are people who “devote mental energy” to understanding us.
• What it looks like in the classroom: Real engagement. Real listening, evidenced by tracking, note-taking, and responding with thought-provoking questions or comments. There’s fewer great joys, I think, than these moments in the classroom – when kids listen to one another, and have something to say that’s all their own. Teachers know that sometimes it happens over the course of a few days – and that's one reason why it stinks to be rushed through curriculum. 
• What it looks like in everyday life: People who don’t devote mental energy to you can make you feel like you’re alone in a room, even if you’re standing right next to them. But those who do? People who stop what they’re doing to see, hear, and understand you? Those people are golden. For some students, a teacher modeling this behavior may be the most they’re seen and heard all day – and that can mean everything.  One reason that teachers are so exhausted when the final bell of the day rings is that listening with understanding and empathy isn’t easy. In fact, it takes a great deal of energy to fully show up for others – and teachers do it all day. Every day.

Thinking Flexibly

• What it means: This is more than just ‘keeping an open mind’, as the adage goes. It’s about being willing to dig in, to not only understand where another viewpoint is coming from but maybe even hop over to that side, if only for a moment, to consider a different angle.
• What it looks like in the classroom: A seminar-style discussion that sounds a little bit more like improvisation than like a debate. Students grab on to sentence starters not because they lack the creativity to use their own language, but because it can be fun to hopscotch through a discussion adding on, clarifying, defending, posing questions, and refining thought with structure. Thinking flexibly looks like open dialogue in a classroom, and teachers know that it takes a whole lot of scaffolding to get students to that place, especially younger ones.
• What it looks like in everyday life: This habit reminds me of the “Scout Mindset”³, a fairly new concept that’s gaining in popularity that’s all about getting curious about an issue and taking the time to find your way through the matter at hand to come to your own thoughts and feelings about it – not a prescribed notion that’s been passed along.

Striving for Accuracy

• What it means: This goes beyond doing your best and includes reviewing and reflecting practices to see where you can improve.
• What it looks like in the classroom: Many teachers feel frustrated by crammed curriculums that limit the instructional time available for reflection after assessment, which can help students develop the curiosity and patience to build a practice of reflectiono. In the classroom, striving for accuracy would look like two students receiving an exam back, one with a low score and the other with a high score, and both being equally interested to understand where they went wrong and why, for the sake of full understanding as they move along to the next unit of learning. School culture has to emphasize more than pushing through a crammed curriculum for teachers to be able to 'sell' this important habit to students. 
• What it looks like in everyday life: For adults, whether in work or in their personal lives, striving for accuracy has a lot to do with bandwidth. When you feel strapped for time and energy, it’s a challenge to push yourself to give your best. When conditions are right for you to feel good, healthy, in control, and respected, you’re able to give your best. Teachers strive for accuracy with little bandwidth all the time, which isn’t easy to do.

Take a Pause

In the next post, we’ll explore more habits of mind. For now, we can sit with the practices of persisting, managing impulsivity, thinking about your thinking, thinking flexibly, and striving for accuracy.

How might they be integrated into your life or into your classroom? Which speaks to you the most and why?

Learn More!

For more information on the 16 Habits of Mind and how to adopt the principles into your school or classroom, explore the Institute for Habits of Mind, and consider certain workshops available through CTLC that are totally asynchronous and flexible and are designed to help you integrate many principles like these into your everyday teaching.

Explore CTLC workshops:

• Challenge Based Learning and Design Thinking
• Technology Tools for Integrating Social-Emotional Learning Competencies in the Curriculum
• The Blended Learning Classroom

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References

¹The Official Habits of Mind Institute Website. 

² Adriene. (2014, January 23). Yoga Breathing | Alternate Nostril Breathing. YouTube. 

³ Galef, J. (2016, April 4). Why "scout mindset" is crucial to good judgment | Julia Galef | TEDxPSU. YouTube.