I am back at the blog again - the new habit is working pretty well! And for tonight's post, I am going to veer away from CI & activities, although I promise not to totally ignore the student angle. Personally, blogging is hard for me. While I have much to share, the written format is not the best for much of it, and it is easy to hold what I publish to a high standard and therefore not publish things are not 'good enough'. So I am using this Monday Night Musings to improve on that. And so far, having a specific time and time limit to write has been helpful.
So, speaking of habits, there's this author, Gretchen Rubin, who has a book about habits and another book about what works for different people and a podcast, and other books as well. If you're not familiar with them, here's a quick rundown - Rubin writes a book about habits that people like. In the process, she discovers that what works for her does not work for everyone, because although readers like her habit book, her metohds fail them. So Rubin digs deeper and thinks some more and invents an organizational system for how people operate relative to expectations, which she calls the 'Four Tendencies'. It is not foolproof, but it is useful.
One of these tendencies is called an upholder. This person responds to both outer expectations (what others want you to do) and inner expectations (what you want yourself to do). Rubin is an upholder, and you can probably think of someone right now who just gets things done, doesn't let anyone down, but doesn't put themself last either.
Okay, let's stop a second. Why would I bring this up if I'm not an upholder? In general, school works for upholders. It is filled with rules and procedures. But having rules, procedures, and relationships in place also benefits other tendencies, specifically obligers and questioners. And that should cover most of your student population.
But it matters how you set these things up - questioners need to know why the rules and procedures are what they are. For example, I end every class with a two minute warning before dismissal- time to organize the classroom, for students to gather their own belongings, for me to have a last conversation with individual students. And because I have gone over with students in detail why I do this, even taking their questions on the subject, asking them to explain the reasons back to me, brainstorming alternate reasons why I might do this, they continue to follow through even with only days left in the school year. And because I almost always have a short, generally positive conversation with an individual student during that time, each student has throughout the year had direct experience with one of the benefits of the two minute warning - relationship-building! And in this way, even questioners like me (could you guess?) stick with the routine because they can now explain why they value it.
So as we all dream of a beautiful beginning to next year, I challenge you to think deeply about what to invest in that will pay off all the way to the end of the year, and especially how you can invest in it so that it works for as many students as possible, perhaps even all students.
Okay, time's up for this week! Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment