Start of "The Habit Project"

(Audio supplement available at the end of this post)

I was driving across the southern United States over the Summer and was spending the day in Flagstaff, Arizona again... So I happened to spend an hour browsing through the local Barnes & Nobles Bookstore. (I can't remember the last time I have actually been in one... years at least!) I almost walked out with three books but managed to narrow down my choices to this one, particular, yellow-covered book from the business/psychology section titled "The Power of HABIT. Why we do what we do in life and business"...

As far as classroom-management, I had had a particularly challenging year last school year. I was maybe looking for something that could help with that... Plus I had a 12 hour drive home in the morning, followed by another 10 hours of airplane flights.... One thing that caught my attention was some of the praise printed on the back of the book:

Any book with "science" and "art of manipulation" could be useful, right?

By the time I got home I had read through almost half of the book (page 153 out of 370 pages) and just gotten done reading about how Starbucks was having a huge rise in customer complaints about bad service and poorly-made coffee that occurred from 2000 to 2008. In reply, they modified their training program for all of their baristas (whom they refer to as "partners".) The program focuses on researched-based strategies to improve how partners dealt with various situations related to their work.

Here's the thing: Starbucks just doesn't TELL their employees that they need to provide quality service, and they don't just GIVE them a list of policies to follow. What they do is give their employees a workbook and training and time to go through it... In the book are included various, blank pages for them to write their own reflections and personal solutions to various problems... then they rehearsed the solutions multiple times until they each become.... a habit.

This was just one of quite a few examples presented in the book that I thought I might be able to take something away from to help me form by classroom-management tweaks for the upcoming school year.

Not only was there the research regarding 4-year-olds and marshmallows (which is a GREAT example to use with my students!) but there was also other stories of drug abuse, bad relationships, and failed careers and how people learned how to excel despite these setbacks. The book discusses the 12-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, a US Army Major stationed in Baghdad who used habits to reduce the incidents of riots in his corner of Iraq, studies with brain-surgery patients trying to decode pairs of toys, rats in mazes, monkeys playing "video games" with blueberry juice drips into their mouths for immediate feedback and habit addiction. There was some of the history of the advertisement industry, Pepsodent toothpaste and America's lack of tooth brushing in the 1920's, Febreeze anti-odorant spray and how they COULDN'T get it to sell until they added a "secret ingredient", Tony Dungy and the Tamba Bay Buccaneers, and how, after he got his team FINALY working on Habits, the team was turned over to a different coach who took them to win the Superbowl the very next year. Finally, there's Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America) was basically saved when its new CEO, with resistance from its investors, focused on Safety Habits instead of profits, but found that these "keystone habits" rippled throughout the entire company's way of doing things, allowing it to be one of the most profitable (and safe!) companies in its field.

I recommend that any and all teachers read through this book (at least the first half so far).

My plan is to spend some blogging time pulling apart some of the details and lessons that I am learning in this book, and try to hash out some of  how this will effect my classroom management this year. I already have some ideas that I like, so stay tuned!

PS: As I was reading through 'habits I was reminded of Harry Wong's great book "The First Days of School" and his use of student "Procedures" to run his classroom. I believe that habits could also be directly related to the NGSS standards as well. What is "The Problem Solving Method" of our math solutions other than a habit?