STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

A reflection about

Habits of Mind by Art Costa

STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

Thomas Adam Johnson | ict-design.org

4/18/2008

EDU 596: Teaching and Leadership Excellence for American/International Schools

A reflection about Habits of Mind by Art Costa STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

Art Costa, an invigorating and extremely humorous speaker, started his keynote speech with a quote from the A.S.C.D. Commission on the Whole Child, which was aimed to help a student to function effectively in schools, at work and in life The quote ended that learning and instruction must become more reflective, more complex and more relevant to societys and students diverse needs and interests now and in their future. Dr. Costa stated he was going to share with us five themes about a Thoughtful Curriculum. These themes would be: Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn, Thinking about Thinking, Thinking Together, and Thinking Big and they would pose to us, as educators, a lot of questions to ask of ourselves. Dr. Costa stated also that we, as a group of professional educators, needed to share a common vision. In order to do so, he explained that a mind shift needed to take place, one from not knowing the right answers to also knowing how to behave when answers are not immediately apparent. To understand this more clearly Costa asked us, Are we preparing students for a life of tests or are we preparing students for the test of life? He suggested that both are necessary. After asking this question, Costa focused on the themes in his speech and therefore I too looked at ways that I can theoretically and practically apply what he was saying in my own classroom or through my administrative responsibilities. The first theme that Dr. Costa looked at in depth was Learning to Think. As a teacher who may be planning a thought-full lesson, there are four simultaneous decisions being made: What important concepts does the teacher want students to learn? What skillful thinking will it involve? What kind of tasks can be designed? And finally, What Habits of Mind will students carry forth? With this in mind, effective thinking requirements would involve: selecting content, thinking skills, cognitive tasks that demand skillful thinking and also Habits of Mind. With regards to Selecting Content we should be asking these sorts of questions: On what standards are learnings based? What essential questions will be addressed? Upon what prior knowledge must students draw? And also, what understandings will students gain? Costa then asked the audience to talk amongst themselves for a few moments to discuss these questions and also the question how we would know, as a teacher, if a student was actually understanding us. My neighbors and I reflected upon these questions and decided first that the content and objectives needed to be eternal learnings; they needed to be relevant to the student in some regard; they needed to be posed at a level to push the envelope of a students learning; and also that students were given enough knowledge to generate interest for them to want to delve further into the subject even past the quantitative time of the unit. In answer to the question about the understanding of a student, we decided a student actually knew what was being asked of them if they were able to impart their knowledge of the subject to another person, i.e. to teach. Many of these ideas were responded to in the rest of Dr. Costas presentation. To bring us back together as a group, Costa responded to the question about understanding with the ideas that if a student can: explain it accurately; give an interpretation; take another perspective; empathize; and ask further questions, then the child has truly understood. But then he posed the question: What is it that I want to go on inside a childs head in order for them to go on to understand this content? which brought us to the topic of Thinking Skills. To think of this topic properly, Dr. Costa made the statement that we, as teachers, do not teach a child to think. They already come to us thinking. However, we can see that students come to us not thinking well. Take for example the similarities between an athlete and a thinker. An athlete like Wayne Gretzgy or Michael Jordan has great style and precision movement, whereas some other people do not. Yet both kinds of people move automatically. This is similar to thinkers who process thoughts spontaneously, but may be clumsy about doing it. It is like people who jump to conclusions, or who give up easily, or people who are not able to express themselves clearly. On the one hand there is awkward thinking and on the other hand we can see people who think eloquently and with great style. Therefore, we decree that Critical, Careful and Creative thinking is the hardest work there is, and this is why many people choose not to do it. As a coach, we need to ask ourselves what it takes to become a good athlete: Work, Practice, or Coaching. Yes to every possibility, and all of these things apply to thinkers as well. So, we are born with the capacity to think, but we need the coaching to improve and master our thinking skills. We can do this in schools. I specifically do this by extracting exact phrases from Blooms Taxonomy and formulating questions hereafter. This allows students to know how to perform a thinking skill; how to describe his or her steps; how to correctly label the skill when they use it; and

2 |Page

ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson

A reflection about Habits of Mind by Art Costa STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

how to apply the skill spontaneously when solving problems. This directly relates to what Costa was saying when he declared, Use vocabulary of thinking in your classroom. He gave the example of differences between cognitively using phrases and not: Lets COMPARE these two pictures VS. Lets look at these two pictures; What do you PREDICT will happen when? VS. What do you think will happen when?: Lets ANALYZE this problem VS. Lets work this problem out, and so forth. He also stated that these words should be developed into a students vocabulary at an early age. I have consciously started using words like this now and have actually placed them on my walls as reminders to me and as visual cues to the students about what they mean and how they look. Now, I also need to apply strategies that give kids a positive path for their ideas. Costa describes this as Cognitive Tasks that Demand Skillful Thinking. He illustrates this as Metacognition: Solving problems, Making decisions, Creating something new, and Constructing meaning. When students do these things they are using the vocabulary we are embedding into their knowledge, like: Compare, Predict and Analyze. These are the paths that engage skillful thinking, and make the child think about their own learning. At this point, Costa mentioned what he is known for best and that was the effective Habits of Mind. Costa stated that he, with another, had narrowed them down to sixteen, and they are: Persisting; Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision; Managing impulsivity; Gathering data through all senses; Listening with understanding and empathy; Creating, imagining, innovating; Thinking flexibly; Responding with wonderment and awe; Thinking about thinking (Metacognition); Taking responsible risks; Striving for accuracy; Finding humor; Questioning and posing problems; Thinking interdependently; Applying past knowledge to new situations; Remaining open to continuous learning He notes also that successful people contains people from all walks of life, not just doctors, lawyers and millionaires. Costa didnt go into every Habit of Mind in great detail, but the ones he emphasized were persisting, managing impulsivity and empowering our students to take risks, and he emphasized that these risks needed to be responsible. In order to implement this idea into my own teaching I needed to demonstrate ways to take responsible risks as well as create a pleasant atmosphere for my students where they would feel they could take these sought-after risks. I explain further in this essay how I implemented such an atmosphere. The next point that was made was about thinking flexibly, which could be examined more closely as changing perspectives, generating alternatives, and considering options about things. In my classroom I encourage debates and am extremely open to new ideas. I will explain now that I am a technology teacher and therefore I have to be flexible in my own thinking on two accounts: 1. Technology is ever-changing and becoming better, faster or completely different and at the same time obsolete; 2. A technology class or with a technological problem there are often at least three, if not more, ways to come to a solution for a problem set. Coming back to the ideas generated from Dr. Costas presentation, Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision in written and oral form was the next point the doctor brought up. I personally, hope to impress upon my students the need for this everyday by asking them further questions about their own questions and asking for illumination about statements they may make in the classroom. At the same time I fight against what many international teachers must also be battling and that is the fact that most of our students are extra language learners. What this means is that not only are these students trying to formulate a thought in their head but they are trying to use the proper contextual form of English, which may be completely backward from their own natural way of thinking. Because our school is a trilingual school, the students jump from one mindset to another, and I can only assume it is huge. As a teacher I need to be aware of this in order to be compassionate and accommodating for the special needs of the students. The second theme Costa examined was Thinking to Learn. He states that in order to learn anything, the brain has to be engaged. As a teacher this means that we need to engage the students in every lesson. I am trying to do this by not only having a hook at the beginning of my lesson, but also looking to see at which point my lesson is going to have a Wow Moment, and also what parts of my lesson are going to be funny, so the students are laughing and having a good time. These are the responsible risks and ways to create a pleasant atmosphere I was referring to earlier in this essay.

3 |Page

ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson

A reflection about Habits of Mind by Art Costa STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

The students need to understand that meaning is not a passive learning experience, that knowledge is a constructive process rather than a finding one, that it is not the content that gets stored in memory but the activity of constructing it that gets stored, and also the fact that humans dont get ideas, but they make ideas. Costa focused in on the fact that meaning making involves emotions and if the students are negatively emotionally involved these are the thought processes that will be evoked when a student rethinks a learned experience. In order to positively affect the students in my own classroom, I create a welcoming atmosphere by smiling, acknowledging them, setting understood rules, allowing laughter and creative responses, and also trying to be reflective about lessons that may not have been effective in order to improve upon them for the next time. Again, I am always looking to try to create a pleasant atmosphere. A good point that Costa made was that if students are held to low expectations their performance remains low. The inverse result occurs if encouragement and belief from the teacher takes place. In order to establish this myself, I look at some of my lower scoring students and reflect upon ways to give confidence to them. I might ask them to help in special ways or ask them to lead a situation. If situations of lower performance are persisting, I might look into reasons behind their learning deficiencies, which may include things that I am not aware of, but could be skewing my attitude towards them. For example, they may have a learning disability or may have had something traumatic happen to them that I need to take heed to. In order to do this though, I first need to be conscious of it. Some instructional strategies that Costa brought up were to: teach for transfer, engage all the senses, scaffold, provide feedback for self-assessment, provide cooperative learning opportunities, have Socratic dialogue and finally model the examples you are giving. This example set is another collection of ideas that I will try to apply to my own teaching. I need to ask myself which of these things I do well or which do I need to enhance. How do I show that students points of view are valued? Do I cause students to question their own and others assumptions? How do I challenge students with relevant problems? Am I effectively structuring standards, units, and lessons around big ideas and enduring concepts? And also, how well am I engaging students in assessing their own learning? These questions that were formulated by Dr. Costa brought him to the third point of his presentation, which was Thinking about our own Thinking. He brought up the point that we, as humans, know that we are thinking and knowing. For example, as teachers we make a plan, we monitor that plan and then we reflect upon that plan, but often students do not do this. They are formulating answers but have no idea about how they came to the answer themselves. There is a lack of cognitive awareness. I personally continue to try to bring to light this awareness in students through the IBOs Design Process. In my class, we Investigate, we Plan, we Design, we Create, and then we Evaluate. We take this further with the fact that we look also at the students Attitudes in Technology by assessing whether a student was inclined to go back in order to refine an original plan, design, or creation. Costa articulates these ideas in that we, as teachers, should encourage the students to describe their plans and strategies for solving the problem, we should ask the students to share their thinking as they are implementing their plan and also that we should ask the students to reflect upon the effectiveness of the students strategy. Costa presented a quote from John Kenneth Galbraith, which consolidated the idea that we all need to act on our thinking and not just our assumptions. The quote was: Faced with the choice between changing ones mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof. The fourth theme was about Thinking Together. This theme brought up the notion about relational trust in schools. For example, what is the relation between: School Professional and the Parent; Teacher and the Principal; Teacher with other Teachers; as well as Teacher and Student? It was noted that student achievement was higher where the trust was greater between all of these factions. We, as interacting groups, needed to think about our conversations with one another and how well we are actually listening to one another. We need to ask ourselves: How well we listen to one another? Can we agree gracefully? Can we take anothers point of view? In addition to, how well do we value each others style differences? In my own practice, I know that I am often stubborn minded and get busy on the proof, as Galbraith so eloquently puts it, and I need to slow down in my thinking in order to realize that another idea may be more valid, better or right. This idea brings this essay to Dr. Costas final theme for the keynote speech, which was about Thinking Big and Long Range. As teachers and planners, we again need to pose these questions to our lessons: How do these learnings help students become the kind of people wed like them to become? Why are these considered essential,

4 |Page

ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson

A reflection about Habits of Mind by Art Costa STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

enduring and lifespan learnings? And finally, how do these lessons enhance our vision of classrooms, schools, communities and a world that are more thoughtful places? With these questions in mind, I now considered how I was going to keep my students open to continuous learning in the future; how also to establish in them a humility and pride in admitting there is more to learn; and finally how to institute the idea to resist complacency. I feel that I am doing this by creating lessons which may start student action and student awareness. For example, in my grade 7 class for computers, we were investigating ways to help out with People who were Tortured and War Victims. The students needed to do research about these people, find out who they were, where they were, and also what other organizations were doing something about it. We then took it upon ourselves to ask the question, what can we do to make a difference? Students created Wikis for knowledge and branched out into the community. Students made the rest of the school aware about these atrocities through charity sales and leaflet distribution. At the end of the project unit, many students were not finished. They took it upon themselves to continue helping with the organizations they had established communications with. They continued, knowing that they were in fact making a difference in some persons life. It was with this knowledge that students felt what they were doing was applicable and worthwhileworth investing more time, energy and learning. Costa too, expands on ways of doing this by focusing on universal issues and themes, like: Conflict, System Thinking, Chaos, Global Issues, Change and Diversity. Many of my units, including my grade 7 project covered these ideas and asked numerous essential questions, including: What is fair and ethical? What is good? What is truth? How might we unite and not divide? And Who should be in charge? Through everything that we are doing in my classes and through my own educational strategies, I am constantly improving upon modeling examples of how we can approach such topics and make differences. The thought Dr. Costa explicitly suggested was that our whole conference was about, Creating a Global Community. I do believe that I am and have been doing this positively through my personal teaching practice, but with Dr. Costas awarding of more cognitive strategies, plus the many more I will learn, I am sure that I will continue to be an excellent teacher and a positive role model, who can grow each day alongside his students.

5 |Page

ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson