Teaching Habits of Mind: Part 1

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Teaching Habits of Mind: It’s not whether you HAVE it or not, it’s how you USE and IMPROVE it.

 

            “Smart is not something you are, it’s something you get.” I remember the first time I saw this saying on a poster in a classroom. I thought to myself, “that’s a good one, I need to use that in my own room.” As teachers, we like to post inspiring quotes throughout our rooms in the hopes that students will read them and take them to heart. I hate to admit it, but even though I loved this quote, I never really thought of it as more than just that: something to inspire. I never consciously considered taking the attitude that this quote hopes to inspire and incorporate it into my teaching. This can be far more than a quote. It should be how we teach the Habits of Mind to our students.

            Teaching the habits as fixed characteristics that somebody already possesses does a disservice to students because they begin to see the habits as unchanging, and potentially unattainable. If a student has trouble thinking independently and we imply that smart people inherently think that way, the student may feel like they can never succeed because they don’t “have” it now. But if we teach the habit as something that smart people work on and develop, we teach that even if you're not good at the habit now, you can get better. This idea of striving to improve our habits of mind is crucial to all students feeling they can succeed.

            Being able to use the habits of mind is not enough. We should strive to improve upon our habits. If we find that we are performing poorly at one habit, we should ask ourselves how we could do better. As educators, we can do this for our students. The habits can be thought of as a muscle; we all have them to begin with but they may be weak. As we work on toning them, they become stronger. If we let them go unused, they may degrade back to weakness. When we see our students using their habits, we should ask ourselves how well they are using them. If students are struggling with a habit, encourage them to find ways to improve upon it. Help them understand that everyone is capable of the habits, but we all need to work on how well we use them.

Source: Mindful By Design

Written by Matt Armstrong