What habits would you like your students to have? If you were a teacher, an educator, professor, what student habits would let you complete your job better?
- Come into class, quietly sit down and get ready to learn?
- Like school or like learning habit?
- Pay attention habit?
- Follow direction habit?
- Reading habit?
- Taking notes habit?
- Organization habit?
- Understanding habit?
- Thinking habit?
- Writing habit?
- Project or presentation habit?
- Clean up and put things away habit?
I’m sure there are more, but who is responsible that they have these habits or skills? Is the teacher responsible to make sure they get them? Are the parents responsible? From what I’ve seen in life, the teachers and the parents give up and claim “it’s impossible”. The student just is who he is and will have to do the best with what he has, it’s impossible to get it all. He has enough and he’ll be OK.
How does that make you feel, if you are the student? The person responsible for building your habit machine to be the best machine, creature of habit possible is going to give up on you. Yes, even your parents and friends are going to give up on you. You are going to be surrounded by people who have given up on something better for you. They are actually used to you that way. So for them, you are fine and really don’t want you to change. They don’t want to have to figure you out again. They like you stuck.
Your are in kindergarten and your Mom says you are going to have to eat this. Do you want to cook it or me? I’d pick MOM, but can I help. I can pour juice from a smaller container and get out the plates and napkins. I can help clean up. By 2nd grade, I can prepare a snack or two along with clean up. By 4th grade, I’m cooking and experimenting a bit and of course cleaning up my messes. By middle school, Mom and I are discussing ideas and I have a few mastered dishes. By high school, I could open a restaurant booth at a carnival and make money, clean up and only have supervision because I’m not 18 years old yet.
You are in Kindergarten and your teacher says, “You are going to end up with a habit machine you are going to have to live with. Would you like me to be responsible for building it or you. You say, “Oh, you take the responsibility. I want to be able to blame someone for my lot in life. It might as well be you or my parents.”
Cooking is sort of like responsibility, isn’t it? I know there are things we call cooking, are there things to do that are acts of responsibility? I would know a person is responsible, because they would be: paying attention, working or practicing, asking questions when they don’t understand, checking their understanding by playing with it, ……… more. What are those acts of responsibility, that could be trained?
What are the training steps from kindergarten to elementary to middle to high school? What would a person who was fully responsible for building his habit machine look like? Does he know what machine he is building and why? Can he picture it or describe it? Is he connected to his Values, Dreams and Goals. Has he researched, strategized and planned and initiated his training? Has he sought out help and gotten as much help as possible, while still remaining responsible (delegating, not abdicating his training). If he doesn’t get it one way does he find another way to get trained? Is he considering a balanced or complete machine: spiritual, community, family, financial, growth and development, recreational and social machinery? Does he have honor, integrity, discipline, joy, fun ….. more machinery? There’s a big difference between trying to be responsible and knowing how to be responsible and doing it.
What would a graduating high school student look like if he was !00% capable and responsible for building his own machine. He knew it was up to him and he was and felt capable and ready to take on the challenge of build his most amazing machine? ….. Or would he just give up and blame it on his situation, culture, genetics, sex, age, …… or something else.
Would he be prepared for limits, restrictions, bias, prejudice, unfairness? This is real, Yes? Would he be ready to be responsible in that situation? Could he still build a machine to be successful or … is he better prepared to give up and blame the boss, the government, the teachers, the parents, his situation, …..
Reading, writing, history and arithmetic are all great, but the habit machinery of responsibility and capableness in the ugly real world, ….. that’s what I’m talking about. It used to be called “Character”, but know it’s touted in business seminars as something rare and new. Most students tend to give up the responsibility and are hoping to be taken care of. That seems to be the training. Yes, I got reading, writing, history and arithmetic, please hire me and take care of me.
All sorts of characters graduate. Yes, but the training, the copies, the duplicates are of helpless, give up and take care of me Characters. There are so many ways to be responsible in so many areas. The responsibility machinery, I can take care of myself and build my most amazing machine, ….. Is rare. Rare only because it is not a focus of training. Reading, writing, history and arithmetic are all great, but the habit machinery of responsibility and capableness in the ugly real world, ….. that’s what I’m talking about: Habits, Characters of personal responsibility, growth and development!
We all have to live with our own habit machine.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew how to build it (capable)
and took on the responsibility of building it?
Students should be trained to assigning themselves homework, of course! They are in charge of their education and practice and training allows for learning. They should be trained to monitor their progress and reward themselves. It should not be the teacher’s responsibility to monitor their progress and reward them. They are the ones that have to live and thrive with the habit machine and education they are building.
At high school graduation, students should have the habit machine and education that can build habit machines, guided by themselves. Their habit machine should be value based and purpose driven. They should have the machinery of training and building habit machines and education as: assigning themselves homework, monitoring themselves, giving themselves rewards intrinsically and extrinsically, input machines (reading, listening), analysis machines, planning and strategizing machines, activation and training machines, ……. And many more.
The teacher’s major job is to get students taking over their education and building of their habit machines as quickly as possible. The teacher’s job is to help them develop the tools of effective and efficient habit machine building. The teachers job is to help them see, rejoice and stay on the road to success (abundant failure and small wins that if held on to add up). The teachers job is to help them grow from the safe place to the dangerous real world. (to be successful, you need family and friends, to be very successful you need enemies and competitors, Charlie Chaplin) The real dangerous and distracting world is where it all happens. We can’t make the world easier, we can only make ourselves stronger and more effective.
A high school diploma should be a license “to be able to do and become anything I want to be, in the real world” Knowledge is the touted elixir, but the habit machines or character of a person tells the true story. The ability to grow and develop their habit machines or character will far outlast the most advanced knowledge.
Can you imagine high school graduates that have habits of actively building and developing themselves. Giving themselves homework they throw themselves into. Monitor, analyze and make use of their knowledge to take the next step. they strategize and plan to make sure they stay on the road to success and reward themselves for this. Who they are and who they are becoming is what they are responsible for. They took it from their teachers, parents, society and claimed full responsibility for it. They have the habit of going for it and making lots of mistakes, but attempt to learn from them. They have the habit of cleaning up any messes they cause. They have fears and weaknesses, but they are not stopped by them. They are not fighting with life but learning to work with it and move it forward with them. Acceptance, forgiveness, love and appreciation lets them be great givers and producers. The world is better because of them.
Different priorities, different values, different ways of doing, thinking and feeling, all gives aliveness and possibilities. The chaos these differences advertise for, must be worked out. It is part of life’s bringing working order to things. As humans, the uniqueness and importance of each of us, is the challenge in life. Life is not fair and their is no one right way, yet there is that which is right and wrong. This right and wrong judgement we may surmise, but in the end our righteousness may be enlightened by new perspective. We do the best we can, then we need to either celebrate or forgive and move on. Being on the road to success, where there is abundant failures and only small wins, is the place of life. Hanging on to the small wins and building a success is Great, but getting there, being on the road of success is amazing. That’s the training of a high school graduate.
Write a comment