While academic achievement is essential to student growth, so, too, is character development. In order to help my students build their characters, I explicitly taught and reinforced multiple habits and mindsets, taken from Arthur Costa and Benna Kallick's sixteen Habits of Mind. The ultimate goal of teaching and reinforcing these habits is to help students behave intelligently when they are confronted with new, challenging situations and experiences. As students increase their proficiency in applying these habits and mindsets, they will be able to transfer and apply them to new situations and contexts.

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One of the habits I taught and reinforced was that of creating, imagining, and innovating. In order to help my students become productive members of society, I wanted to provide them with multiple opportunities to think outside the box, to problem-solve in atypical ways, and to tackle challenges from different perspectives. I wanted students to learn how to construct meaning for themselves. Subsequently, I initially challenged students to cut a piece of paper perfectly without using a blade. Later, I reinforced this habit through a variety of practices, including project-based learning, brainstorming activities, and role-playing. As students were challenged to be creative, imaginative, and innovative, students were able to articulate the value of atypical strategies, methods, and ideas.

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In addition, I taught and reinforced the habit of managing impulsivity. As a primarily 6th grade teacher, my students are adjusting to a new campus with new expectations. By reinforcing this habit, my students were able to transform into considerate young adults who thought about the consequences of their actions, resisted acting on impulses, and acted more thoughtfully, calmly, and deliberately within my classroom and the school at large. Initially, I taught this habit through an activity testing whether or not students could delay gratification. To reinforce this habit, I developed classroom systems to help students stop and consider their actions and/or impulses in order to act more thoughtfully and intentionally. In addition, I reinforced this habit through games and activities requiring self-control. As a result of these lessons and reinforcement opportunities, students were able to realize that our actions always have consequences, consequences that may not be positive. So, to avoid negative consequences and to create a more positive, inclusive classroom culture, students began to internalize this habit and consider the consequences and rewards associated with deliberate, considerate actions.

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To explore how these habits and mindsets were taught and reinforced within my classroom, click on the images below.