Richard Hoshino

In this talk, we will examine Stephen R. Covey’s best-selling motivational book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and explore how we can apply each of these seven habits to improve our teaching.

Dependence is the paradigm of you – you take care of me; you come through for me; you didn’t come through; I blame you for the results.

Independence is the paradigm of I – I can do it; I am responsible; I am self-reliant, I can choose.

Interdependence is the paradigm of we – we can do it; we can cooperate; we can combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together.

In this talk, we will discuss how we can become interdependent educators.

- George Bernard Shaw

• Visualization Exercise from the Harvard MBA program.

• Key lesson: two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. We must try to see each picture from another frame of reference.

• Conditioning affects our perceptions and our paradigms. We see things not as they are, we see things as we are.

• "What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do" (Covey, p. 22)

• "Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher." (From the book The Courage to Teach, by Parker Palmer).

• "Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice".

• Proactivity is the realization that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. It’s the realization that our behaviour is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

• Two inspiring examples of proactive behaviour from Hollywood:

• Robert Benigni’s portrayal of Guido in Life is Beautiful.
• Russell Crowe’s portrayal of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind.

• The opposite of proactive is reactive. Reactive people are driven by their feelings, circumstances, conditions, and environment. Proactive people are driven by their values.

• In your teaching practices, take your values and exercise the initiative to transform your classes into the type of learning environment you want.

• "The difference between people who exercise initiative and those who don’t is literally the difference between night and day. I’m not talking about a 25 to 50 percent difference in effectiveness; I’m talking about a 5000-plus percent difference." (Covey, p. 76)

• A key part of being proactive is to listen to our language, and modify it if necessary.

Reactive Language Proactive Language

That’s just the type of teacher I am. I can use a different approach.

That student makes me so mad. I control my own feelings.

There’s nothing I can do about this. Let’s look at our alternatives.

• Reactive language becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

• High Expectations + Hard Work = Outstanding Results.

• As educators, is it our job/duty to get our students to become more proactive in their learning?

• If so, what specific things can we do to get our students to become more proactive?

• As educators, what can we do to become more proactive?

• All things are created twice: there’s a mental creation, then there’s a physical creation. Habit 2 is the mental creation.

• Visualize success: see it, feel it, experience it – then do it. Remember, whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

• The most effective way to begin with the end in mind is to create a personal mission statement. It is your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and your values. It is the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

• For your teaching practices, you would do this by creating a personal teaching dossier.

• To use a computer science analogy,

• Habit 1 says, "I am the programmer".
• Habit 2 says, "Write the program".

• What is your personal mission statement for teaching?

• Who can help me put together a teaching dossier?

• Should we get our students to construct their own mission statement for their learning?

• Should we work with our students to construct a mission statement for the class, together?

• Should there be a mission statement for the department? If so, what will it look like?

• All things are created twice: there’s a mental creation, then there’s a physical creation. Habit 3 is the physical creation.

• Habit 3 is the exercise of independent will toward becoming principle-centered, doing it day-in, day-out, moment-by-moment.

• To use our computer science analogy again:

• Habit 1 says, "I am the programmer".
• Habit 2 says, "Write the program".
• Habit 3 says, "Run the program".

• "The human will is an amazing thing. Time after time, it has triumphed against unbelievable odds. The Helen Kellers of this world give dramatic evidence to the value, the power of independent will." (Covey, p. 148)

• "The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose." (Covey, p. 149).

• Notes on effective time management:

• organize and execute around priorities.
• challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.
• don’t focus on things and time, focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results.
• sometimes, we must learn to say no.

• The key is not to prioritize what is on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

• Effective people are not problem-minded; they are opportunity-minded.

• Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent, but important.

• Benefits of spending most of your time in Quadrant II: vision, perspective, balance, discipline, control, and very few crises.

• Stressed-out, burned-out people spend 90% of their time in Quadrant I, and 10% of their time in Quadrant IV. For them, there is no time to do Quadrant II activities! Quadrant I people have little time to do anything other than crisis management.

• As teachers, researchers, and administrators, we spend so much of our time in Quadrant I. What specific things can we do to spend more of our time in Quadrant II?

• What are some Quadrant II activities that are directly relevant to our teaching practices?

Richard Hoshino

Last time, we looked at the first three habits in Stephen R. Covey’s motivational book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", and discussed how we can apply them to improve our teaching practices.

Before we look at the last four habits, let’s review where this is all leading:

• Originally, we all start off dependent. The focus of dependence is you. You take care of me; you come through for me; you didn’t come through; I blame you for the results. We need the first three habits to lift us towards independence.

• Independence is the paradigm of I – I can do it; I am responsible; I am self-reliant, I can choose. That is different from interdependence, which is the paradigm of we – we can do it; we can cooperate; we can combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together. These next four habits will lift us from independence to interdependence.

• "As we become independent – proactive, centered in correct principles, value driven and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity – we then can choose to become interdependent – capable of building rich, enduring, highly productive relationships with other people." (Covey, p. 187)

• In a financial bank account, we can make deposits and build up a reserve, and we can make withdrawals which does the exact opposite.

• An Emotional Bank Account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that has been built up in a relationship. It’s the feeling of safeness you have with another human being.

• When we build up a reserve in an individual’s Emotional Bank Account, communication becomes easy, instant, respectful, and effective. If there are no reserves, then communication becomes hostile and defensive.

• Two examples of withdrawing from the Emotional Bank Account:

• Father to son: "Go clean your room. Button your shirt. Turn down the radio. And don’t forget to take out the garbage!"
• Teacher to student: "Write down this formula. Memorize it since I’m going to test you on it. This is what you need to know, so make sure you learn it."

• Six ways to make a deposit in someone’s Emotional Bank Account:

• Understanding the individual
• Attending to the little things (e.g. office hours)
• Keeping commitments
• Clarifying expectations
• Showing personal integrity
• Apologizing sincerely when you make a withdrawal

• When students want to see us for help, let us look at this as a positive opportunity to build a relationship with that student, rather than a negative and burdensome chore. Instead of thinking, "oh no, not another student wanting my help", let’s say, "here is a great opportunity for me to really help this student and have that person develop trust and confidence in me as an educator." Attitude is everything.

There are always four types of outcomes to an interaction between two people, or two parties. Let’s specifically look at the interaction between a teacher and a student.

• Win/Win (Nash Equilibrium)

• Agreements and solutions are mutually beneficial and mutually satisfying. The teacher and the student come up with the solution together.
• It’s not my way or your way, it’s a better way.

• Win/Lose

• This is the idea that if I win, then you must lose. So I must strive to win, regardless of how that would make you feel.
• As teachers, often we have this mentality with our students: we use our position, power, and credentials to get our way.
• Most of us view assessment as a Win/Lose paradigm, by measuring students relative to their peers. Competition, not cooperation, lies at the core of the educational process. (Cooperation is often associated with cheating).

• Lose/Win

• This can be summarized by the following attitude: "Go ahead, have your way with me. I’ll conform to make you happy. I just want to make sure that you like me."
• Some teachers seek strength from popularity or acceptance, and feel that their effectiveness is based on how well they are liked by their students. Inexperienced teachers, in particular, forget that being an effective teacher and being well-liked by their students are two very different things.

• Lose/Lose

• What happens when two people with Win/Lose attitudes get together to resolve a conflict. Both parties lose. The Dalhousie strike was an excellent example of Lose/Lose.

• Life is an interdependent reality, not an independent reality. We must strive for Win/Win.

• Let’s create Win/Win performance agreements with each of our students: "I am always amazed at the results that happen, both to individuals and to organizations, when responsible, proactive, self-directing individuals are turned loose on a task". (Covey, p. 226)

• "My best experiences in teaching university classes have come when I have created a Win/Win shared understanding of the goal up front. I’d say, ‘This is what we’re trying to accomplish. Here are the basic requirements for an A, B, or C grade. My goal is to help every one of you get an A. Now you take what we’ve talked about and analyze it and come up with your own understanding of what you want to accomplish that is unique to you. Then let’s get together and agree on the grade you want and what you plan to do to get it.’ " (Covey, p. 227)

• "Teachers can set up grading systems based on an individual’s performance in the context of agreed upon criteria and can encourage students to cooperate in productive ways to help each other learn and achieve." (Covey, p. 232). Note: in educational circles, this is known as a rubric. Often students work with the teacher in designing this rubric.

• In order to create a Win/Win Performance Agreement with our students, we need to make the following five things explicitly clear:

• Desired Results
• Guidelines
• Resources
• Accountability
• Consequences

• What are some specific Win/Win Performance Agreements we can make with our students in our classes?

• What’s effective about the way we currently assess our students? What can be done better?

• "If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication." (Covey, p. 237)

• Communication is the most important skill in life. We are all good at reading, writing, and speaking. But how good are we at listening? Especially with our own students, how often do we truly listen to them?

• Emphatic listening: listening with intent to understand. We are trying to get inside another person’s frame of reference, to see the world they see the world, to understand their paradigm.

• Communication experts estimate that only 10% of our communication is expressed by words. About 30% is represented by our sounds, and the other 60% is expressed by our body language. In emphatic listening, we listen with our ears, but also, and more importantly, we listen with our eyes and with our heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning.

• Note: emphatic listening is not the same as sympathetic listening. "The essence of emphatic listening is not that you agree with someone; it’s that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually." (Covey, p. 240). Once we truly understand the other person, then we can seek to be understood.

• We define maturity as the balance between courage and consideration. Seeking to understand requires consideration; seeking to be understood takes courage. Win/Win agreements require a high degree of both.

• Do you feel that emphatic listening skills are important with your students, or do you feel that it is more important to establish your authority? I am positive we will have very diverse opinions on this.

• As educators, what can we do to develop our emphatic listening skills?

• Synergy is the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is the realization that 1 plus 1 can equal 3.

• "When you communicate synergistically, you are opening your mind and heart and expressions to new possibilities, new alternatives, new options." (Covey, p. 264). It is creative problem-solving at its finest.

• We need to develop trust by making deposits in the Emotional Bank Account. If we don’t have trust and cooperation, we can’t have synergy. That’s why we first need Habits 4 and 5.

• When we meet to brainstorm for ideas on improving our Math 1000/1010 and Stat 1060 courses, think about how we can use the motive of Habit 4, the skill of Habit 5, and the interaction of Habit 6:

Habit 5: understand one another first, then seek to be understood.

• What specific things can we do to achieve synergy in our classes?

• This habit involves developing your personal PC (production capability). It is preserving and enhancing the greatest asset in your life: you.

• There are four dimensions to our nature: physical, spiritual, mental, and social / emotional. Sharpening the Saw basically means expressing all four dimensions of our nature, regularly, and consistently in wise and balanced ways. Personally, I feel that effective teaching comes from a balance in all four dimensions of our nature.

• Physical Dimension: this dimension includes exercise, nutrition, managing stress, and getting enough R&R. Exercise is a classic Quadrant II activity because we realize it is important but because it is not urgent, most of us don’t do it regularly. Sooner or later, it catches up to us. Exercise is a great way for all of us to develop proactivity.

• Spiritual Dimension: this dimension is our core, our centre, our commitment to our value system. How can we renew our spirit every single day? We can do this in a multitude of ways. You can achieve this through prayer or meditation. You can immerse yourself in great literature or great music. You can spend time with nature. This can all have an incredible effect of spiritual renewal. Martin Luther once said "I have so much to do today, I’ll need to spend another hour on my knees". For him, prayer was not a mechanical duty, but a source of power in releasing and multiplying his energy. We all need to spend enough time with our spirit, renewing it daily. Let us all create our own personal mission statement so that we can have a deep understanding of our centre and our unique purpose, and spend the time to recommit to it every day.

• Mental Dimension: this dimension involves developing our own learning, and striving for continuous improvement. For our own teaching practices, this could include going to conferences, workshops, and discussion groups on education, such as this study group of ours. We can read books on educational theories. We can write journals of our thoughts and learning experiences from the classroom, and reflect on how we can become better teachers. All of these are excellent examples of Quadrant II activities.
• "Sharpening the Saw in the first three dimensions – the physical, the spiritual, and the mental – is a practice I call the ‘Daily Private Victory’. And I commend to you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it – one hour a day for the rest of your life. There’s no other way you could spend an hour that would begin to compare with the Daily Private Victory in terms of value and results. It will affect every decision, every relationship. It will greatly improve the quality, the effectiveness, of every other hour of the day… it will build the long-term physical, spiritual, and mental strength to enable you to handle [the most] difficult challenges in life." (Covey, p. 296)

• Social / Emotional Dimension: while the first three dimensions are closely related to Habits 1, 2, and 3, the social / emotional dimension focuses on Habits 4, 5, and 6. This dimension is centered on the principles of interpersonal leadership, empathic communication, and creative cooperation. Applying these three principles to our daily lives, we achieve effective interdependent living. If we can apply these three principles to our teaching, we will become effective interdependent educators. We develop intrinsic security and confidence from helping other people in a meaningful way. Influence, not recognition, becomes the motive.

• In the words of Hans Selye, "a long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others".