Learning & Leading With Habits of Mind

Students who are practicing responsible risk taking show a willing-
ness to try out new strategies, techniques, and ideas. They explore new
art media, wanting to experiment with different effects. They are willing
to test a new hypothesis, even when they feel skeptical. In a group, they
often can be heard saying things like “Let’s try it!” or “What’s the worst
thing that can happen if we try? We’ll only learn from it!”

Finding Humor

I’d rather be a failure at something I enjoy than be a success at

something I hate.

—George Burns

As students develop this habit, they learn to distinguish between clown-
ing around and using humor to increase their own or a group’s produc-
tivity. They learn not to take themselves too seriously. They joke about
errors they have made, poke fun at themselves, and seek the humor and
absurdity in situations that seem to warrant it.
Students who have developed this habit are often observed using
humor to relieve a group’s tension. They know the difference between
using humor antagonistically and using humor to raise their own and oth-
ers’ spirits. They generate stories, metaphors, and puns. They are also
quick to laugh and collect humorous stories to delight others.

Thinking Interdependently

Community is... a dynamic set of relationships in which a syner-

gistic, self-regulating whole is created out of the combination of

individual parts into a cohesive, identifiable, unified form.

—Center for the Study of Community, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Students who think interdependently set aside their own ego needs
to serve others. They devote their energies to enhancing the group’s
resourcefulness. They put others before themselves, and they derive sat-
isfaction when others excel and are recognized.
As work increases in abstraction and complexity, we are pressed to
find its meaning through what Lev Vygotsky calls “social construction”

Defining Indicators of Achievement 187