A Manor School student holding one of the Habits of Mind flags runs past a group of students holding letters spelling out a Habit of Mind during the school’s celebration last Friday. Photo by Donna MacKenzie
The weather was perfect (sunny and warm) for an outdoor celebration on Friday, November 20, and the students and staff at Honeoye Falls-Lima’s Manor School did just that, even though the wind at times played havoc with that celebration. It was all right as the kids and staff used persistence and found humor during those times; appropriate given that the celebration was in recognition of Manor School being awarded Habits of Mind Learning Communities of Excellence certification.
In 2016, Manor School began a journey of building a strong character education philosophy.
“Before that, we had seen a slight increase in discipline referrals, maybe 45-50 for the whole year out of 550 students,” said Assistant Principal Joey Weaver. “We didn’t want to see reading and writing come at the cost of respect, responsibility and empathy. Dana Sharp (Manor’s speech pathologist at the time) said it would be great if we could find something that wasn’t a program but a philosophy.”
Sharp, Weaver and a special education teacher began looking at philosophies and school-wide movements to help social-emotional learning and, in Weaver’s words, literally stumbled on Habits of Mind. The trio started a book study of Habits of Mind Across the Curriculum by Art Costa and Bena Kallick.
“The whole premise is based on Steven Covey’s work on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People but the Habits of Mind creators found that effective problem solvers have more habits,” Weaver said.
After five years of work, the school was awarded the certification. Manor School is only the 24th school in the world with this distinction and just the fourth in New York State (Brighton Central’s Council Rock School being one of the first). To celebrate, Manor School students and staff made a human circle around the school and the students who have earned Student of the Month honors were flag bearers with each having a flag representing a Habit of Mind. Upon reaching another flag bearer, the first one would touch their flag to the second who would then pick up the run, much like the Olympic torch bearers do with the Olympic flame. Other students and staff held up papers with a letter on them with each class spelling out the different Habits of Mind.
All the students at Manor (holding grades 2-5) learn about the 16 habits all the time, in every unit of study, even in the specials of art, music and physical education.
“Every Friday, the kids take time during check-ins or class meetings to reflect on the week and talk or write about how the Habits of Mind have helped them,” Manor Principal Jeanine Lupisella said. “They keep a digital portfolio of it which travels with them from grade to grade.”
Not only did the school leadership get buy-in from students, parents and staff but also from the HF-L Board of Education and the HF-L Education Fund. The HF-L Education Fund features many local business owners on it and they agreed that the Habits of Mind are what they want in their employees when they hire them. The Habits of Mind certifiers came and interviewed teachers and students to make sure that the Habits are a culture in the school, and not just written on posters.
“The Habits of Mind also help kids become stronger academically because they have something to help get them through the tough stuff,” Lupisella said. “Teachers are using it in literature and the kids are recognizing the habits in characters in fictional work or in real life, noting when a character shows persistence, for example. It’s sometimes hard for our younger students to understand character traits and I think this has helped them with that.”
The school often puts a special focus on a habit each year and is focusing on Listening with Understanding and Empathy this year. Other habits include Persisting, Thinking Interdependently, Striving For Accuracy, Speaking with Clarity, Finding Humor, Managing Impulsivity and Thinking Flexibly.
“It’s great to do well in school and we want our students to be good learners,” Weaver said. “But, we also want them to be a good person with moral character.”
