Reviews of ‘Good Habits’

Two educators I greatly respect have written reviews of Good Habits, Good Students and have kindly allowed me to post them here and here.

Caroline Ellwood was one of the founders of the International Baccalaureate’s Middle Years Programme. She has been a middle school teacher and principal, taught IB Theory of Knowledge, and has been a leading proponent of Islamic Studies in international schools. She is currently editor of International Schools and the International Schools Journal, the two flagship publications of the Council of International Schools.

Konrad Glogowski is well known and widely respected for his blog of proximal development, in which he chronicles his work as a middle-school teacher in Canada. If you teach secondary school, have a look: Konrad is sure to challenge and inspire you.

I am grateful to Caroline and Konrad for taking the time to read Good Habits, and very pleased that they have positive things to say about it.

Free Sample Copies for Review

I now have some copies of Good Habits, Good Students that I can send out to anyone who might be able to write a review, share it with colleagues, consider it for adoption as a textbook, or purchase multiple copies for classroom use.

If you are a

  • book reviewer
  • educational blogger
  • magazine editor
  • teacher
  • school administrator, or
  • professor in a school of education

I will happily send you a copy on request. Just drop me an email message [ericmacknight AT mac DOT com] explaining who you are. Be sure to include your mailing address. I will send your copy off as soon as I can.

Offer good, as they say, while supplies last.

UPDATE 22 OCTOBER 2007: Sorry, but I’ve run out of sample copies. I will order more and let you know when they have arrived via a new post. In the meantime, consider buying a single copy from your favourite online bookseller.

Practice good exam-taking strategies [book excerpt]

It’s that time: end-of-year exams have either started already or will shortly. This excerpt from Good Habits, Good Students may help.

Getting Started
Read the instructions and skim all the questions of the whole exam before answering any questions. Be sure no pages are missing from the exam booklet. Be sure whether you should write your answers on the question sheet or on a separate answer sheet. Should you write in pen or pencil? Put your name on the exam booklet and on every one of the answer sheets. Use a highlighting pen to mark important information in the instructions or questions. If a question is unclear, write a note to the teacher explaining how you have interpreted it.

Comprehension Questions
Read the questions first and then the passage they’re based on. That way, you know what to look for when you read the passage.

Multiple-Choice Questions
If you aren’t sure, test researchers say your first hunch is more likely to be correct.

Know how much each question or section is worth, and spend most of your time on the most valuable questions.

Don’t get stuck on a difficult question. Skip it, answer the questions you know, and then come back to the difficult ones at the end if you have time.

Essays
Before you begin writing, brainstorm your ideas (web diagrams or mind-maps are excellent) and then plan out the structure of your essay.

State your thesis in the first paragraph.

Be sure that each body paragraph consists of one assertion plus all the evidence and argument needed to support it. Lead your reader smoothly from one paragraph to the next with transitions or linking phrases that reinforce the meaning of your argument.

In the conclusion, try to do more than simply re-state what you’ve already said. Take your ideas “one step further”  by discussing the wider implications or adding your personal judgments.

If you have time, catch your reader’s interest by opening the essay with a startling statement, a quotation, or a brief anecdote. Then in your conclusion you can close nicely with a da capo (“from the top”) ending that returns to your opening by commenting on it, completing it, or adding to it.

Mathematics and Science Tests
Show all your work. Be sure your reasoning is clearly explained, as this is often just as important as the final answer. Never delete or cancel a solution until you have discovered a better one. We learn a great deal from our mistakes, and teachers will be able to help you make improvements if they can see your mistakes and understand where you’re making a wrong turn.

If you finish the test or exam early . . .
There are three possibilities: a) the test was too easy for you; b) the test was too hard for you; or c) your answers have been too hasty and careless. First, re-read the entire exam—questions and answers—making any needed changes or additions. Second, re-read it again, starting with the last question and working your way back to the beginning. Why? Reading it backward may help you catch a mistake you missed before. Finally, read through your answers to check for spelling and grammatical mistakes.

The Homework Workout: exercise your mind and your body

“The experts” say you should take a short break every 20-30 minutes when doing homework. They also say you should exercise regularly. Teachers say the assignment is due tomorrow and if you don’t hand it in . . . .

What to do?

Enter the Homework Workout.

Set the timer for 20-30 minutes and start in on the homework. When the timer goes off, do a set of pushups, say, and a set of squats. Don’t forget to stretch. Reset the timer, and go back to the books. When the timer goes off again, do another set of each exercise. Don’t forget to stretch.

The Homework Workout will keep your mind fresh and alert, your muscles toned, and your homework assignments up to date.

You can do lots of exercises right in your bedroom or study: pushups, squats, ab crunches . . . try some isometrics, too. If you do yoga, try a few sun salutations. If you have weights, do some curls or overhead lifts.

You’ll end up in great shape, and so will your grades.

(Don’t forget to stretch.)

Arrive on time (book excerpt)

It’s a matter of respect.

In some schools, arriving late to class is viewed seriously, with strict rules, late slips, detentions, and other penalties for those who are tardy too often. In other schools, these issues don’t seem so important. Most students attend 6-8 classes each day, along with occasional assemblies, meetings, rehearsals, and practices. It’s a busy life, but it’s also often repetitive. If your school doesn’t stress the importance of arriving on time, it’s easy to slip into the bad habit of thinking it’s not really important.

However, in the real world, arriving on time can be very important. Some cultures value punctuality more than others, but in those cultures where it’s important, arriving late can be a serious problem. What’s the big deal about arriving late? It’s a sign of disrespect. A student who arrives late to class is sending a message to the teacher: “You and your class are not very important to me, and making you and the rest of the class wait for me or disrupting the class by entering late is really not a problem, because you and my classmates are much less important than I am.”

Later in life you’ll be happy to have the habit of arriving on time when you have to get to work each day, attend business meetings, make appointments with doctors, lawyers, and bank officers, etc. Arriving on time for dates can be important, too. In each case, by arriving on time you send the message that you respect others and appreciate the value of their time and attention.

If you are in the habit of arriving late, start arriving on time today.

Four Ways Teachers Can Inspire Students

[Note: This was written before revelations about Bill Cosby’s personal behavior made him someone whose words one would hesitate to quote, even if the words themselves are exactly right.]

As I have written before, a teacher’s first job is to inspire students to learn. Konrad Glogowski has written along similar lines about “passion-based learning,” and my Grade 8 students recently read his article and added their own thoughts on their class blog.

Reading their posts, I find some common threads about what teachers can do to inspire their students.

1. Be passionate yourself, and share your passion with your students. Most of my students agree that an uninspired teacher will not inspire students. “I believe that teachers being passionate in teaching is the key to everything,” writes a Grade 8 girl.

2. Explain why. Repeatedly my students say that when they don’t understand the point of an activity or lesson, they lose interest. History lessons seem to be a particular problem (“Who wants to learn history? The stuff in the past doesn’t matter anymore. What does matter instead is the future.”) but any topic can seem irrelevant if its relevance is never explained. By chance I came across an article in Teacher Magazine in which comedian Bill Cosby is interviewed on exactly this subject. Cosby tells about a speaking engagement in which he discovered that one of the panel members was a math teacher.

I said, “Perfect. I’ll be the kid.” He looks at me. I said, “You’re the teacher.”

I looked at him and I said, “Why I gotta know this?” And he stared back at me. I said, “You teach algebra?” He said yes. I said, “Why I gotta know this?”

I turned to [the audience] and I said, “If you can’t out-argue a kid about your passion, the discipline you’re in, then you might as well take the job, put it down, and go on over to the post office. You’ve got to be able to tell these children the beauty of your passion.”

3. Teach for understanding. If students find a topic boring, 9 times out of 10 they don’t understand it. “Whenever you stop understanding things, you also lose interest . . . .” (On the other hand, if the teacher finds it boring, we have a different problem altogether. See #1, above.)

4. Be supportive, kind, and open. Primary school teachers understand this. Unfortunately, too many secondary school teachers seem to think their first commitment is to the curriculum, not the students. They forget, too, that even though adolescents try to act older than they are, they still respond very well to kindness, and very poorly to its absence. (Who doesn’t, in fact?) Listen to what my students say.

•“I didn’t have to think, Boy, that was a stupid question. . . . The way she taught was really helpful.”

•[When students] “hate the subject and the teacher . . . there won’t be any deep thinking, creative ideas, or enthusiastic debating in class.”

•“There is a teacher that once made English my favourite subject. . . . She was never annoyed at students asking questions and [having to] repeat the explanations over and over. . . . She paid attention to every single student, and thought about our projects together. Since she was an easy person to talk to, many students asked for further advice and guidance. She also constantly encouraged us, and she shared many stories and ideas with us.”

•“Most of the time, I hate the subjects, because I don’t really like the teacher who is teaching it.”

•“Teachers also have to be supportive and kind to all students so that students feel comfortable about talking to teachers about their passions and asking questions about them.”

Students clearly understand the importance of teachers being kind and open, and cultivating positive relationships with students. I wish every teacher understood this, too.

Finding inspiration

What do students need to be successful in school? What do people need to be good learners, whether in school or on their own?

They need three things.

  1. Reading Anyone can be a reader, and everyone benefits from reading.
  2. Good Habits Although schools expect students to have good habits, they rarely take the time to teach good habits. But anyone can acquire good habits, and everyone can benefit from them.
  3. Inspiration Without inspiration, what will motivate you to read, develop good habits, and learn? Inspiration is the engine that drives our efforts to improve. But why is it so hard to find?

The Lack of Inspiration

Potential sources of inspiration are all around us–so why are so many of us uninspired?

1. Daily living beats the inspiration out of us. Let’s face it, the daily routine is a grind. Seven lessons a day, five days a week is a grind. A lot of it is tedious, and dull. Often, the purpose of what we’re doing is unclear. Often, the connections between what we do in one lesson with what we do in other lessons are obscure, or missing altogether. The daily routine grinds us down.

2. We are out of touch with ourselves. We spend so much time and energy worrying about what others expect of us–how we should look, how we should act, what we should say, what music is cool, what fashions are cool, etc.–that we rarely take time to look inward and ask the really important questions: Who am I? Where am I? What should I be doing? We live in what has been called an “amusement culture”. This is interesting, because historically it is so bizarre. In most times and places, a society’s culture is defined by what people make and do. But in an amusement culture, most people make nothing; all they do is buy things, and amuse themselves. Shopping and playing, however, cannot be the centre of a good life. If shopping and playing are the centre of your life, you have an empty life–a life in which you are alienated from yourself. You’re not doing anything; you’re not making anything; you’re just keeping the economy going by buying things–things that, much of the time, you don’t even need. Things that, in a very short time, you won’t even want.

The 85-year-old Test

Here’s one way to get back in touch with your life. Imagine that you are 85 years old. When you look back on your life, you feel happy and proud. You were, most of the time, the best person you could be. The world, or at least the part of it you lived in and the people you touched, is better off because of you. How did you live your life?

What Is Your Dream?

“I have a dream!” proclaimed Martin Luther King, Jr. What is your dream? If you have a dream to pursue, a vision to fulfill, then you will be inspired. Everything you do, every day, will be a small step toward the realization of your dream. What is your dream? Excuse me? Did you say, you have no dream? When did you stop dreaming? Why? Find your dream. Follow your dream!

Who Will Care About You?

The economy will be very happy if you spend your life buying things. The government will be very happy if you spend your life working in a job you hate, just so long as you are producing something useful to the system. The government and the economy have no interest, however, in your personal happiness. They have no interest in whether, when you are 85 years old, you will look back on your life with pride and satisfaction. They don’t care whether you have a dream. Do you care?

Reading is crucial to learning. Good habits are crucial. But without inspiration, you will have little reason to read, and little reason to cultivate good habits. In fact, you will have little reason to learn, to grow, to be the best person you can be.

Don’t let the forces of dullness grind you down.

Get inspired!

Inspiration comes first

Anyone can build better habits. Anyone can master the habits that lead to success in school. But what will motivate a student to work hard and build good habits?

Inspiration.

If you are uninspired, the first job is to start dreaming. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to go? Once you have a dream, you won’t have to search for motivation. Every time you feel tired, just think of your dream and the energy will come back. Follow that dream!

And teachers, remember that unmotivated students are uninspired students. Help them find a dream that will make the perspiration worthwhile.

Inspire them first; then ask them to work.