what i want to do this afternoon is just share with you a little story about the sort of common journey i see people go on with the habits of mind and about the way they approach the habits because the way you sort of view the habits of mind really affects the both the way you work with them in your classroom but also the success you're going to have over the long term so the first thing i want to talk to you about is that you can't start this journey you just can't because you're already on it if you could imagine going up to a teacher that's had 20 years experience and starting to talk to them about the habits of mind can you imagine them turning around just going oh god 20 years i've been teaching this stuff and i've never thought about teaching kids to strive for accuracy it's just ridiculous you've always used the habits of mind they've always been important to you but what we've lacked is this common language effective teachers have used the habits of mind in their curriculum we've talked about them in assessment and reporting uh they even appear in our policy documents if you listen to the the media tonight they'll talk about the need for people to practice to get better to work on their weaknesses to work in groups to learn from their mistakes the habits of mind aren't new so what we've got to do here is become more focused and more deliberate about what we're trying to do in fact it's a really good experience or an exercise if you take the australian curriculum or whichever curriculum documents you're working from at the moment and go through and start pulling out the the different qualities of different words the different thinking verbs they've used and replace them with the habits of mind because they're already there and i'm sure you'll agree with me on that we've used words like work ethic and passion and dedication go back and flick through your last reports that you've written and you'll find where you've talked about kids needing to work together in groups where you've talked about them using what they've learned in previous years we have talked about you know how the kids need to develop a positive work ethic i know that when i've written reports in the past that was a phrase i used a lot johnny needs to develop a more positive work ethic and it's an interesting phrase to use because if i was an english teacher i would never write johnny needs to learn how to spell because i've got to teach johnny how to spell but when i'm talking about these sorts of work behaviors these ways of working i say johnny has to bring that work ethic with him now i've got a 10 year old daughter and if one of her teachers writes in a report that lucy needs to develop a more positive work ethic the first thing i'll be doing is going to that teacher's office and saying well what are you doing to help lucy develop that positive work ethic we find that our content you know spelling algebra or science whatever it might be appears in our lesson plans but the development of these sort of dispositions doesn't always appear and that's part of what we're trying to talk about today um what we're trying to achieve here is not something new this is not about you know introducing a new strategy a new technique a new way of doing things it's about becoming more focused it's about becoming more intentional it's about becoming more deliberate about what we're already good at really effective teachers have always been good at developing habits of mind and what we're trying to do here is to get even better at doing that so if you're worried about you know how do we start what do we do first you've already started one of the things i'd encourage you to do is to go back through your curriculum plans go back through your lessons your activities and recognize where you're doing this well already because no one starts this journey we all continue it and we need to get better and more focused at it when i see teachers working at this sort of level in this sort of way what i'm seeing is teachers using language like good students hard workers students that can concentrate that have got a positive work ethic and this is all good nothing wrong with working this way and i'm sure you can all talk about when you've used these sort of terms then the habits of mind come along and someone says hey these habits are great you know when you've talked about teamwork i've talked about cooperation you've talked about getting along we can use this term thinking interdependently and all be on the same page and when you've talked about stick to it and you've talked about persistence and you've talked about not giving up and you've talked about keeping on going we can use this common language and i'm sure you've already experienced a lot of that already where you've realized that the habits of mind or the language and habits of mind add clarity to what you've already done and talked about and valued with the students and when you introduce the habits of mind there's probably been a lot of flag waving going on you've started talking about making posters you've started talking about how important they are you've described them and you've moved into this way of working where you start identifying the habits of mind you start labeling them you start requiring them from the students and again this is all valuable stuff and things that i think you should do what happens is when teachers start working in this way we end up with teachers saying uh johnny i need you to use this habit of mind today i want you to have this habit so you do better at school we start shifting the language we use in our classroom from these general work habits work ethic hard working type language to the language of the habits of mind and you might have already experienced that in your classroom where you've shifted from using the habits of mind sorry using just general language to more specific language of the habits and teachers working in this way often when you look at their curriculum plans their lesson plans their unit plans you see checklists down the side and the idea of the checklist is to make sure that the habits of mind are being included in your lessons and who wouldn't want that i mean that's a great thing how many of you though would honestly say your the habits of mine haven't already been included in your lesson plans you get kids to check their work to work in groups to generate ideas to communicate with each other the problem with working with the habits in this way is that what happens is the school comes in introduces the habits of mind and teaches the habits of mind as if they're a topic you tell the kids what they are you introduce them you use the language and then it's a case of saying well kids you know what they are start using these habits of mind and while working in that way is you know not a bad thing there's very little actual change in teacher practice and i know this happened in my classroom in my classroom i went through the flag waving i went through and said kids this is what the habits of mind are make the posters find the synonyms find the antonyms look at the examples of people using them and at the end of you know four or six weeks of doing that introduction i had melissa and belinda down the back of the class that was still doing well and would now tell me they're doing well because they're good at striving for accuracy and i still have bill down the front saying you know still not performing well still calling out still getting in trouble and the only real difference in his behavior was he'd now tell me that yeah i got in trouble today because i didn't manage my impulsivity well did i there's no real change in student outcomes and there's no real change in teacher practice and this is where a lot of schools fall over because at this point kids get a sense of well you've told me about all these habits i know what they are i'm not doing any better at my work stop hammering me with just the language the students with well-developed habits of mind still do well but now they just talk about the language and what happens here is teachers either go uh you know this is interesting but it hasn't made a difference and it falls over or you take it further and it's taking it further to this next step that i really want to talk to you about today you know that you're working in this way just using the language if you hear the words i want you to use the habits of mind i want you to be this way or you didn't use if this is the sort of language that you're using in your classroom you're still in this sort of identifying labeling type mode of using the habits of mind and to shift out of here and this is the the real key and this is what we really need to move into is we need to make sure we understand the relationship between the habits of mind and achievement because what most teachers believe is that to have if you set challenging tasks kids will develop mature habits of mind and it just doesn't work that way if you think about a sports analogy if you wanted kids to get better at football or a cricket or a tennis would you send them out all day every day just doing practice matches probably not what you'd end up doing is you break down the skills teach them the the strategies get them to reflect on what they're doing because success in challenging tasks doesn't develop your habits of mind it's having mature habits of mind that leads to success in challenging tasks and when you get that relationship round the right way you start realizing that what our job is as teachers is not just to set the challenging tasks but to develop the mature habits of mind so they can succeed in those challenging tasks at this point there's a juncture teachers start saying well all right if this is the case if my job is not just to get the kids to use the habits of mind i've got to teach them how to improve their habits of mind you you can go one of two ways and even when the you know in any group there'll be a a split here there'll be some teachers that say well hang on i went to university for you know four years i've been teaching for 15 or 20 years no one's taught me how to teach the habits of mind so who's going to do that and there's a detour here and this happened in my own experience i was teaching in a large school and we agreed habits of mine were important but there was a resistance to well whose job is it to teach this so he went down this detour of teaching thinking skills we introduced thinking skills classes and that's not a bad thing there is a place for teaching thinking skills in classrooms and i think we should do that but it's not where everything should happen because if you teach the habits of mind well it's all right to introduce the habits of mind as a topic but if you teach it separate to the content there's still very little change in most teachers practice if you do the habits of mind on tuesday afternoon then kids start to think that well that's what we do on tuesday afternoon but it's obviously not it's something we want to do over time so to get back on track we need to move from this idea of teaching the habits as a topic to learn about to teach to know them to explore them and start talking about improvement our language needs to shift to the idea of all right how do we get better at them how do we develop them i don't want to hear any teachers talking about kids using the habits of mind what i want to hear in a classroom is teachers talking about improving maturing using the habits of mind well we don't come into the classroom today and say kids we're going to be thinking interdependently today we say kids we're going to get better at thinking interdependently today and it's that shift from the word use to the word improve from having to developing that's absolutely critical in what we're doing i'd encourage you to you know listen to your own language listen to the the mindset that's coming through because if you're using that fixed language of have use you know that sort of word those sort of words you've got this idea of the habits of mind being something that the students are or aren't whereas if you're using language that is improve develop extend mature grow these are all words that have two effects one they show kids they're not fixed but two it puts clearly in the teacher's lab the responsibility for improvement and this is where the shift happens the shift moves from teachers asking kids to use so teachers sitting back and actually saying to themselves what am i doing in my classroom today to help kids get better at these habits of mind and that's a real shift for a lot of teachers we're used to every day saying what am i doing today to help the kids get better at my maths or my writing or my language or my geography or my science or whatever it might be but to ask ourselves what am i going to do today to help kids get better at thinking using the habits of mind effectively that's a different way of thinking for a lot of teachers there's this dual learning outcomes that need to come into our mind we need to say that on the one hand right i'm teaching my content by the end of the class today kids are going to be better at the language the maths the science the art the history whatever we're teaching but on the other hand there's this second lot of outcomes that kids are going to be better at working in groups at checking their work and striving for accuracy being persistent they're not just going to do those things they're actually going to get better at them and to get better at them the key is these dimensions of growth we need to be able to describe in very clear crisp detail what that improvement looks like we wouldn't go into a classroom and say our kids by the end of the day you're going to be better at reading we'd be able to describe what that improvement in reading is going to look like and we need to have that same clarity about the habits of mind and the way we describe that is through the dimensions of growth that you've looked at of meaning capacity alertness value and commitment and i want you to think about those dimensions of growth in the same way as you think about reading writing listening and speaking when you're teaching language or about number and probability and chance and so forth when you're teaching it talking about maths one of the ways we do this is we look at the um backwards design process of wiggins with wiggins mctie and we say look these are the content the the subject understandings that need to be achieved by the end of this lesson or the end of this unit of work but we also define the habits and mind outcomes that need to be achieved by the end of the unit of work as well and from there we design assessment that would show that kids have achieved those outcomes and then use the the content as a vehicle for making sure those content outcomes and the habits of mind outcomes are reached when you do that a shift happens in your teaching and talking to you now from a distance it's hard to describe but i'll want to introduce you here to karen watson karen's the um head of or at this time was the head of english at kerwin state high school which is a large high school in queensland and karen was a very good teacher before she met mate she was head of english she's now head of innovative programs and you don't get to have that sort of role without being a good teacher but i want you to listen to what she says about how the habits of mine changed her classroom practice it's not just about using the language it's about focusing on how the kids get better so have a listen to karen here whoops come back again sorry i've been using the habits of mine with my year 8 english class and it has made a a wonderful difference to my classroom practice my students are so much more successful but i feel more successful i've you know you you choose a habit to enhance your content and the way it changes the way you look at at the unit of work it changes your perception of how you're going to deliver it it makes you so much more focused and and you know you're aware that that you're talking to the students and how are you doing this how are you managing this what's happening here and the students become so reflective of what they're doing and my results have improved dramatically and but that's just sort of one process i think the students themselves have improved dramatically as as people and that's why i think the habit of mind habits of mine are so transformational because i can see that they've they've grown they've become better at using the habit of mind which is what we want and i just can't see myself ever not using them now and i think that's the truly inspirational thing a couple of things to note about what karen says there first off she says student outcomes have improved dramatically so let's keep that right up front that what we're on about here is not just developing habits of mind but developing habits of mind so students outcomes can improve and karen talks about you know it's not just their academic outcomes they've improved as people as well she talks about the change in her practice she says it makes it so much more focused so much more intentional about what she does that when she's looking at a piece of work or an activity that she's got for the kids it makes you think about why am i doing it this way why am i doing it that way and that's one of the really common things that teachers say about working with the habits of mind is that when you're sitting down to plan whatever learning experience that you might be planning there's a hundred different ways you could teach any given piece of content but with that focus of the content and the habit of mind it makes you more intentional more deliberate about why you do it and the third thing to note is what karen didn't say and what karen didn't say was that it's worth all the extra work once you get used to working this way with the habits of mind it's not about doing more it's not extra it's not added to your workload it just helps you become focused and deliberate and i said earlier on that if you go back and look at all your lessons from the past you'll see the ones that you've done really well involve the habits of mind already when you look back at your best lessons it's always about the ones that work the best will have developed students habits of mind and by focusing on the habits of mind and being deliberate about it now we can make those really good lessons more frequent and that's why we don't start this journey we've always worked with the habits of mind and what we're trying to do now is to get more deliberate more intentional about it so that we can do a really good job more often what often happens at this point is that teachers go great i get this it's about development it's about improvement i haven't got a clue how to do that yet but so i can see that that's what i have to work on but if it's about development if i've got to approach the habits of mind like a subject because that's what i'm asking you to do schools that approach the habits of mind like a topic that teach it cover it and then go what next kids use this do this those schools invariably fall over the schools that approach it with all right kids these are things that we're going to develop not just for the next six weeks but over the next 6 12 18 20 throughout your lifetime they're the schools that really succeed and the ones that do it really well do it by being very deliberate about all right this is what it's going to look like in our classroom we're going to get better and it's going to look like this at the end of the unit and at the end of the next unit it's going to look like this and teachers then start going well all right if that's what i've got to do where's the scope and sequence where's the the map for the habits of mind where are the standards and at this point a lot of teachers sort of throw up their hands and go well you know i've already got a curriculum document that shows where all the kids have to be at with a thousand dot points for maths and english and science and history and geography and art and music do we have to overlay the habits of mind on top of that and the answer is no because when you go through your curriculum it's your curriculum that's always guiding your choice of habits of mind your first choice is your first question is always what do i have to teach and which of the habits of mine is going to best support me teaching this so we're always putting the content up front and the habits of mind support the delivery of the content we're learning from experience now that if you've got a broad curriculum which we do the natural diversity of the curriculum the diversity of the students differences in teacher preference and all that sort of teaching style and things that go on naturally in school tend to cover the habits of mind fairly naturally so there doesn't seem to be a need for extensive mapping of the habits of mind what we need to do is at the start of each unit of work we say what level of maturity is needed to achieve this unit of work well we define that and then we use that definition to help guide our guide and focus our teaching so where to last step on our journey we started from a point of saying right we have the habits of mind we've always used them we've always talked about them perhaps in different language with our class and we've asked kids to use them to have them to make use of them in our classroom where we're going now is as teachers to say okay these habits of mind are something we need to develop what's the pedagogy that i'm going to engage in in my classroom that's going to help kids get better at these habits and that's the the essence of where you're at now i hope that we're shifting from posters and language and slogans and things like that which is very much teaching the habits of mind as a topic and we're shifting now to saying these are things that we need to develop not just over the next class the next unit of work the next term or semester but over a student's lifetime and to do that i need to define the level of maturity that's required and teach that not just require it but actually teach it you