I read Angela Maiers’ Change This Manifesto, "Habitudes in the Classroom: Teaching the Habits and Attitudes Our Students Need in the 21st Century". She shares her thoughts on what habits and attitudes (habitudes) students need to be successful in today’s world. I wondered if it is important for students then it must be important for teachers. And if it is important of teachers, it must be important for Professional Learning Communities. So what follows is a mash-up up of Angela’s habitudes with my ideas on Professional Learning Communities.
“The 21st century world needs learners to BE critical, BE creative, and BE strategic.”
“The 21st century world expects learners to HAVE the endurance, fortitude, and courage to brave through each new challenge with confidence and competence.”
Professional Learning Communities are no exception. They are increasing faced with questions of how to exploit the best expertise, talent, and knowledge regardless of geography. They face an ever-increasing desire for real-time feedback, the expectation of immediacy and the compression of time and space. Increasing expectations of accountability combined with increasing transparency in complying with expanding federal, state, and local laws in addition to categorical program monitoring requirements, and labor contracts.
Further, the need for organizations and teams to look outside themselves to expand their network with new members who are sources of learning, creativity, and innovation. And continuous change, choice, and disruption due to the increasing rate of development in the number of choices, options, disruptive ideas & technologies, and new paradigms is a further source of pressure on Professional Learning Communities. Times are changing for Professional Learning Communities. Angela’s ideas offer a core set of “habitudes” for PLC to adopt.
Habitude 1: Imagination
“Imagination is the foundation of all thinking. If we cannot see the possibility, we cannot achieve the outcome. Imagination is our mind’s eye, and has the capacity to jump from present facts to future possibilities. Our capacity to dream, hope, and plan for the future is influenced and impacted by the control and understanding of imagination’s remarkable power.”
What Professional Learning Community shouldn’t be imaginative? The imagined outcome of student achievement, student learning, student success, should be a key driver of PLCs.
Habitude 2: Curiosity
“Champion learners are curious about everything.”
“Questions like ‘what if’ and ‘I wonder’ keep us in motion. Curious brains are active brains, and active brains become smart brains.”
Great results begin with great questions. Professional Learning Communities should develop the skill of questioning and the ability to conduct cycles of inquiry into student learning. All PLC should be curios to what students are learning, how they are learning, and what get in the way of the learning.
Habitude 3: Perseverance
“Perseverance is the cornerstone of any successful endeavor, in school and out. It is a key to victory over unfavorable circumstances.”
The work of a Professional Learning Community is not easy. It takes perseverance.
“It’s the ‘no-matter-what’ part of the habitude where difficulty lies.”
“Real perseverance happens when we do it anyways, in spite of opposition.”
“…struggle is the welcome mat to the door of breakthrough.”
Professional Learning Communities must be committed to the struggle. There are plenty of barriers and obstacles. No matter, PLCs must collaborate, co-create, innovate, and ideate around these barriers, obstacles, and cultural opposition. The students are depending on that level of perseverance.
Habitude 4: Self-Awareness
“We all have strengths and weaknesses in regard to our learning performance and capabilities.”
“Self-awareness is the ability to simultaneously exist both inside and outside or ourselves.”
Self-Awareness is a powerful concept for Professional Learning Communities. I define awareness for PLCs here as the ability to or knowledge of…
Ambidextrous Thinking
Wisdom Stewardship
Abilities
Response-ability
Network
Experiences
Skills
Scalability
Habitude 5: Courage
“Courageous learners understand that safe is risky. Success is the byproduct of taking risks.”
Professional Learning Communities must have the courage to overcome barriers to collaboration such as…
The Hoarding Barrier
The Not-Invented-Here Barrier
The Search Barrier
The Transfer Barrier
Information Cascade
The Three Sins of Teamwork
“When students become accustomed to asking each other for reasons and opinions, to listen carefully to one another, to build on another’s idea, they demonstrate courage.”
It takes risk. It takes courage. Professional Learning Communities must display both if our students are to succeed.
Habitude 6: Adaptability
“Adaptability is more than just serving change; it is using change as a growth opportunity. In fact, with anticipation of change, you can control change.”
“Simple put, in our world, there is only one constant: Change.”
Professional Learning Communities should operate as a CiNO. A Change is Normal Organization. They should be built to change, adapt, modify, and adjust. That is what learners do and that is what is at the heart of a PLC. The learning is the work. That means change is normal.
Angela says, “We are the CLO’s, Chief Learning Officers, of our classrooms. We must be the learner we wish students to become. As living, breathing exemplars of the Habitudes in action, we model passionate curiosity, imagination adaptability, and persevere out loud and in front of our students.”
Shouldn’t our Professional Learning Communities demonstrate the sort of professionalism, learning, and community that our student will be expected to display when they leave the classroom? Shouldn’t our Professional Learning Communities display these “Habitudes?”
The answer is yes.
“The 21st century world needs learners to BE critical, BE creative, and BE strategic.”
“The 21st century world expects learners to HAVE the endurance, fortitude, and courage to brave through each new challenge with confidence and competence.”
Professional Learning Communities are no exception. They are increasing faced with questions of how to exploit the best expertise, talent, and knowledge regardless of geography. They face an ever-increasing desire for real-time feedback, the expectation of immediacy and the compression of time and space. Increasing expectations of accountability combined with increasing transparency in complying with expanding federal, state, and local laws in addition to categorical program monitoring requirements, and labor contracts.
Further, the need for organizations and teams to look outside themselves to expand their network with new members who are sources of learning, creativity, and innovation. And continuous change, choice, and disruption due to the increasing rate of development in the number of choices, options, disruptive ideas & technologies, and new paradigms is a further source of pressure on Professional Learning Communities. Times are changing for Professional Learning Communities. Angela’s ideas offer a core set of “habitudes” for PLC to adopt.
Habitude 1: Imagination
“Imagination is the foundation of all thinking. If we cannot see the possibility, we cannot achieve the outcome. Imagination is our mind’s eye, and has the capacity to jump from present facts to future possibilities. Our capacity to dream, hope, and plan for the future is influenced and impacted by the control and understanding of imagination’s remarkable power.”
What Professional Learning Community shouldn’t be imaginative? The imagined outcome of student achievement, student learning, student success, should be a key driver of PLCs.
Habitude 2: Curiosity
“Champion learners are curious about everything.”
“Questions like ‘what if’ and ‘I wonder’ keep us in motion. Curious brains are active brains, and active brains become smart brains.”
Great results begin with great questions. Professional Learning Communities should develop the skill of questioning and the ability to conduct cycles of inquiry into student learning. All PLC should be curios to what students are learning, how they are learning, and what get in the way of the learning.
Habitude 3: Perseverance
“Perseverance is the cornerstone of any successful endeavor, in school and out. It is a key to victory over unfavorable circumstances.”
The work of a Professional Learning Community is not easy. It takes perseverance.
“It’s the ‘no-matter-what’ part of the habitude where difficulty lies.”
“Real perseverance happens when we do it anyways, in spite of opposition.”
“…struggle is the welcome mat to the door of breakthrough.”
Professional Learning Communities must be committed to the struggle. There are plenty of barriers and obstacles. No matter, PLCs must collaborate, co-create, innovate, and ideate around these barriers, obstacles, and cultural opposition. The students are depending on that level of perseverance.
Habitude 4: Self-Awareness
“We all have strengths and weaknesses in regard to our learning performance and capabilities.”
“Self-awareness is the ability to simultaneously exist both inside and outside or ourselves.”
Self-Awareness is a powerful concept for Professional Learning Communities. I define awareness for PLCs here as the ability to or knowledge of…
Ambidextrous Thinking
Wisdom Stewardship
Abilities
Response-ability
Network
Experiences
Skills
Scalability
Habitude 5: Courage
“Courageous learners understand that safe is risky. Success is the byproduct of taking risks.”
Professional Learning Communities must have the courage to overcome barriers to collaboration such as…
The Hoarding Barrier
The Not-Invented-Here Barrier
The Search Barrier
The Transfer Barrier
Information Cascade
The Three Sins of Teamwork
“When students become accustomed to asking each other for reasons and opinions, to listen carefully to one another, to build on another’s idea, they demonstrate courage.”
It takes risk. It takes courage. Professional Learning Communities must display both if our students are to succeed.
Habitude 6: Adaptability
“Adaptability is more than just serving change; it is using change as a growth opportunity. In fact, with anticipation of change, you can control change.”
“Simple put, in our world, there is only one constant: Change.”
Professional Learning Communities should operate as a CiNO. A Change is Normal Organization. They should be built to change, adapt, modify, and adjust. That is what learners do and that is what is at the heart of a PLC. The learning is the work. That means change is normal.
Angela says, “We are the CLO’s, Chief Learning Officers, of our classrooms. We must be the learner we wish students to become. As living, breathing exemplars of the Habitudes in action, we model passionate curiosity, imagination adaptability, and persevere out loud and in front of our students.”
Shouldn’t our Professional Learning Communities demonstrate the sort of professionalism, learning, and community that our student will be expected to display when they leave the classroom? Shouldn’t our Professional Learning Communities display these “Habitudes?”
The answer is yes.
Fantastic!
We live in a world of complexity and change and those who survive and thrive will not be the smart or wisest among us- they will be the ones who can imagine, persevere, adapt, and courageously act.
If we are to lead students in that world, than we must embody these very attributes. We must be the learner we wish then to be, and you have given us a framework to do just that!
Thank you for extending this critical conversation with your readers and their team!
Posted by: Angela Maiers | October 07, 2009 at 05:56 AM
Thanks Anegla. The future will certainly push our Professional Learning Communities to "survive and thrive" through the complexity and change.
Your "Habitudes" are just the prescription.
Posted by: Rob Jacobs | October 07, 2009 at 04:24 PM