Dr. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is considered by many to be a groundbreaking and life changing book. Covey interviewed some of the world’s most successful people and synthesized their responses to the challenges, tribulations, and their achievements into 7 habits, or qualities that helped these businesspeople, lawyers, doctors, politicians, and academics to thrive in their respective fields. Covey’s book has been gaining ground in the educational realm, and not just high school and college. Movements have sprouted throughout the country—and even spanning the globe—where Covey’s 7 Habits are being institutionalized, taught, and lived as part of children’s education. This has fostered a sense of leadership and character building that has become intertwined in the rich fabric of arithmetic, writing process, geography, and the state learning standards. The pageantry of the South Bronx has offered me a stage to help my sixth graders to formulate their own ideas on leadership, success, and begin to live them as they develop their own habits.
Our highly evolved economy requires highly evolved thinkers. The 3 R’s of old are still prevalent, but must be supplemented by the three C’s; Communication, Character, and Creativity. Leadership and character building is becoming a crucial strand in the thread of education, the water that allows the lotus to bloom. Molding leaders and future activists can have the presupposed ripple effect, the flap of the wing that sparks a tsunami of revolutionary thought elsewhere. It is never too early to start providing students with a steady diet of leadership opportunities, and the cooperation, initiative, and emotional intelligence associated with them.
One of the most challenging aspects of teaching in a low income community has been reaching the students outside of school. By this I mean enabling them to circumvent the burgeoning chasm of distractions and disruptions in their own neighborhoods. Coming from a middle class two parent household and living in the suburbs has also caused me to overlook some fundamental issues that my students might face. For instance, when a student was not turning in homework, it did not occur to me that that student did not know that homework was supposed to be written down in a planner. Such a simple task for remembering their assignments and scheduling their day was totally foreign to my students. After parent-teacher conferences with concerned parents who could not understand why their child did not complete homework, I asked what I thought was the blatantly obvious question, “Does your son own a planner?” When the response, a sheepish look of confusion and fear confirmed my own preconceived notions, I offered the parent one of the twenty gold trimmed planners that I had on my desk. I told the parent to have the student take it to me tomorrow, and we would go over how to schedule out their day.
Such a simple task as writing your duties in a planner serves as a larger metaphor for what many students are not getting at home: the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to succeed and become leaders of their lives. After teaching how to use the planner to the student in just three minutes, there began a seismic transformation. It became almost an obsession for the student to write down his work in the planner, and schedule time to complete homework. The student came in the following week and asked, “Can I have one of those planners for my mother? She’s very disorganized and I think it could really help her with things.” When I handed another planner over to the student, I made sure to ask if he was comfortable teaching her. “Yes,” he said with pride as he quickly grabbed the planner and stashed it away in his backpack, empowered by his newfound ability to organize and instruct others how to do so. Another student who rarely turned in homework and was put on the “planner plan” was intrigued by this organizational strategy, and ended up sharing it with her mother. Her mother was floored by this concept, and soon began following the same methods of writing down information, scheduling her day, and prioritizing. As a young adult with a litany of responsibilities—bills to pay, meetings to keep, calls to make, groceries to purchase—I could not imagine living without an organizational method, but would I have known how to do it if I was never taught.
As educators today, we are not just responsible for filling students minds with knowledge, our jobs have become to model character and teach students ways to be successful. Simply recording homework in a daily planner connects directly with the first three of Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. Owning a planner and scheduling your day enables you to become more efficient, effective, and to (1) Be proactive. It establishes the chance for students to set goals and think long term, to (2) Begin with the end in mind. Moreover, it gets students prepared to compartmentalize, prioritize, and (3) Put first things first. Students might learn this on their own, or from home, but for many of those who are devoid of these skills, I am reminded of the adage, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Preparing students, and teaching these leadership habits will give them a lifetime of leadership qualities.
Educators must also insure that students internalize other messages of success because sadly, and oftentimes for a variety of reasons, many students are not being taught these lessons at home. School has become the haven where they must be taught effective behavior, communication, and ways to take care of themselves, and deal with others. Teachers are the mechanics that must calibrate students’ character. At times, this feels like alchemy, turning a frustrated, disgruntled, and angry student into a glossy, refined leader, but it can be done by having them live effective behavior, and not tolerating anything less. Students and teachers alike must (4) Seek to Understand, then be understood. They must have the wisdom and patience to recognize that there might be outside influences affecting student behavior, and the best way to manage it, is to understand it. Teachers must impart to students the power of collaboration, and positive thinking, so that even in difficult times and during conflict, they will have the poise to (5) Think win-win for all parties. Teachers must show the ability to collaborative and utilize collective strengths so that students can learn to (6) Synergize. Finally, teachers must highlight the importance of self-improvement, and continuously challenge oneself with goals, high standards, and striving for the zenith so that they (7) Sharpen the saw of body and mind.
The classroom must be a compliment to the values at home, and sometimes, is doubly important when these values and habits are the only place where students receive this education. As I write this, a cluster of twelve students sit in my classroom now fifteen minutes after the final period bell has rung its sweet yet shrill shriek. They have arrived over ten minutes late to one of their classes, and are facing the consequences of their actions. As they silently sit in their seats perhaps seething at the fact that they are being kept after school by me on a beautiful, sunny sixty degree day, question the fairness of this punishment, or consider what can be done to avoid this consequence in the future, I hope that the seed of another one of life’s lessons is being planted. “You are responsible for your actions, and you must face the consequences for them. Not going to class does you more harm than good because in addition to missing parts of your education, you are now sitting inside while your friends are all home.” I look into the windows of their souls hoping that the message has resonated. Undoubtedly, some will be back tomorrow, and again, and again. Eventually, I hope the planted seed blossoms and they begin to realize the control that they have over their lives and how they are masters of their own destiny. A chilling, but sadly real thought, transgresses through my mind during each one of these daily “lessons”. I’d rather have them learn this in the comfortable confines of school, than out on the streets, because out on the streets some of them may not be lucky enough to have a second or third chance.
–Evan Piekara
1 Comment
March 20, 2009 at 10:47 am
If you would like to implement some of Stephen Covey’s best ideas, you can use this web aplication:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your Goals (in each of your life’s categories), projects and tasks, in an intuitive interface. It has a Checklists section, for the repetitive activities you have to do, important but not urgent (Quadrant II, for example your routines/habits). Also, it features a Schedules section and a Calendar, for scheduling you time, activities and for the weekly review.
Some features from GTD are also present, like Contexts and Next Actions.
And it’s available on the mobile phone too, so you can access it wherever you are.