habits of mind
I could never be like that. They've got something I haven't got... they've got talent.
Sometimes it's easy to look at successful people from a distance and say to ourselves that they are somehow different to the rest of us. They were born with something we simply don't have. We can recognise it, admire it, call it talent, or a gift, but we can never have it. We could never be like them.
Edward de Bono has a wonderful analogy that I love to use when talking about intelligence. He likens a persons innate, inborn, intelligence to the type of car they dive.
We are certainly all born different. That's an undeniable fact of life. In de Bono's analogy this difference is like the car we drive. Some of us a born with Ferrari's and some of us are born with mini's.
The Peter Principle goes something like this:
In any heirachy, an individual will rise to his or her own level of incompetence and then remain there.
Rohan taught me to always introduce all 16 Habits of Mind.
I often get asked "which Habit of Mind should I start with?" and my answer is always "All of them." Although we might choose to focus on just a few Habits of Mind, if we don't at least mention the others, we might be robbing students of the opportunity of finding their most important Habit of Mind.
I'm always amazed how quickly students engage with the Habits of Mind.
I like to think I'm a reasonably good teacher. I work hard at making my classes relevant and interesting for students. But when we come to the Habits of Mind, they seem to automatically make their own connection. They see the relevance and importance immediately.
When I introduce the Habits of Mind I talk about where they came from.
Habits are funny things. The reason that they are so useful is because you barely know you have them!
When I introduce Habits of Mind to students I always begin with the idea of what a Habit is. There's lots of great and easy to use resources for this.
I was recently at Westbourne Park Primary School in Adelaide South Australia where I presented a Habits of Mind Learning Community of Excellence Award to the school. During the presentation the principal, David Adams, outlined the evidence he has collected that shows the significant impact the Habits of Mind have had on the schools literacy and numeracy results.