Seven habits of highly successful teachers

1. Habits of Highly
Successful Teachers
By
Mrs Abida Mahmood
Qurban & Surraya Educational Trust
Walton Rd
Lahore Cantt
Inspired by the idea of Stephen Covey
March 2008

2. They Lead

3. They Train

4. They
teach

5. They Inspire

6. They Motivate

7. They Touch Lives

8. And they Change Lives
……Forever

9. TEACHERS

10. Making a difference as a teacher
Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
Teachers sow good habits in
children…..

11. What is a habit?
Habit is a principle that we
internalise. It is the
overlapping of knowledge,
skill and attitude. Skill
Attitude
Knowledge
Habit

12. “. . .[teachers] come to
trust their insights and
judgements at the same
time as they begin to
decrease their dependence
on decontextualized
principles and techniques of
good practice” (Brookfield,
1990)

13. Effective habits of
Teachers
• Be Proactive
• Begin with the End in Mind
• Put First Things First
• Think Win/Win
• Seek First to Understand, Then
to Be Understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the Saw
• Find your voice and inspire others

14. Be Proactive
Begin with an end in mind
Put first things first
Think win win
Seek first to understand then to be understood
Synergize
Sharpen the saw
Private Victory
Public Victory
Renewal Find your voice

15. 1. Be Proactive
Stop worrying about the things you
can’t control, like the weather, the
illiterate parents of your pupils and
what your colleagues are going to
wear.
Focus on what you can control, your
attitude, your decisions and your
response to whatever happens to you.
Gain control over your moods.

16. Circumstances beyond control
Too much to cover
Students ill prepared or not interested
Not enough time
Teaching not rewarded

17. Work within circle of influence
Choices Responses
Circle of Control
Ourselves Attitudes

18. 2.Begin with the End in
Mind
A goal not written is only a wish.
Write down your goals. Why are you in the
teaching profession? What is the aim of
your life?
• essence precedes existence
• intention (mental representation)
then action
• central role of mission statement
• learning objectives of the lesson

19. Begin with the end in mind
“Teaching is about making
some kind of dent in the
world so that the world is
different than it was before
you practiced your craft”
Brookfield, S.D. (1990).

20. Covey writes,
“How many really buy into it and use it as
your frame of reference for making
decisions?
Without involvement there is no
commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it,
circle it, underline it.
NO INVOLVEMENT, NO COMMITMENT”

21. Begin with an end in mind
PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT
If you don’t have a personal mission
statement it’s time for you to have one
now. Your Nabul- aein.
You have been created to do something, as
now you are in teaching you are influencing
the lives of many.
What do you intend to do with your life as a
teacher?

22. Mission statement of a teacher…
Enable me to teach with
WISDOM
For I help to shape the mind
Equip me to teach with
TRUTH
For I help to shape a conscience
Encourage me to teach with
VISION
For I help to shape the future
Empower me to teach with
LOVE
For I help to shape the world

23. 3.Put First Things
First
Take fifteen minutes at the beginning of
each week to plan your week. Teaching
needs a lot of planning- long term
planning, term planning, day to day
planning, lesson planning- obviously the
school will have policies on planning but
it’s up to you to prioritise your
tasks.

24. Identifying missions and values
Identify missions and values
Set Goals
Plan weekly
Plan
Daily

25. Strategies for teaching
1.Moderate classroom incivilities with pro social
immediacies
2. Wait
3. Begin before feeling ready
4. Work and teach in brief, regular sessions
5. Stop
6. Moderate over attachment to content and
overreaction to criticism
7. Moderate negative thinking and strong emotions
8. Let others do some of the work
9. Welcome learning and change
10. Build resilience by limiting wasted efforts

26. The magical matrix
Crisis Relationship building
Fighting fires New opportunities
Deadlines Creativity, Planning
Busy Work Some mail,
True Procastination reports
meetings, etc.
Know how to say no

27. 4. Think Win - Win
When Regan was president, he had a sign in his
office that read, ‘We’ll accomplish more if we
don’t care who gets the credit.’
Get into the habit of sharing recognition and
praise whenever you get it. People will love
you for it.
You are not the only best teacher around, learn
from other great teachers, be the first one
to ask to learn. It would help you to grow.
Take pleasure in sharing.
Two brains are always better than one.

28. Win-win
Interdependence
Emotional Bank Accounts- making people trust you
 Understanding the individual- especially
pupils
 Attending to the little things
 Keeping commitments
 Clarifying expectations with pupils and
administration
 Showing Personal Integrity
 Apologizing sincerely for “withdrawals”

29. 5. Seek first to understand,
then to be understood
Learn to use these words, ‘What do you
think?’
We think that we as teachers are
supposed to give advice if someone
comes to us for help.
If we learn to understand by listening to
everybody especially our pupils, life will
be much happier. (spelt conference)

30. Listening leads to Vulnerability
The Adjunct Professor's Guide to Success: Surviving
and Thriving in the College Classroom
One of the greatest rewards of
teaching is allowing yourself to be
sufficiently vulnerable that you
empower students to share more of
themselves with you and their peers
than might at times be
comfortable.

31. 6. Synergy
Synergy is achieved when two people work
together to create a better solution than
either person could alone. It’s not your way
or my way but a better way, a higher way.
Learn to appreciate differences. The next
time you run into someone and feel yourself
judging that person because they dress,
talk, think, speak, or look different, stop
yourself and think about what you do have in
common instead. Remember they might be
judging you the same way you judge them.

32. Synergy
We as teachers need to learn with
open mindedness and teach pupils
to do the same, to share, to
celebrate differences, to achieve
as team members and to find new
and better ways of teaching and
learning.

33. Diversity =
Creative Sparks =
Opportunity

34. Synergy is more than compromise or cooperation.
Compromise is 1+1=1½. Cooperation is 1+1=2,
Synergy is 1+1=11, the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts.

35. 7. Sharpen Your
Saw
Social/Emotional: Meet people
and see the positive side in
them.
Spiritual: Pray regularly
Mental: Learn, read
Physical: Exercise

36. Sharpen your saw
Abraham Lincoln was once
asked, ‘What would you do if
you had eight hours to cut
down a tree?’
He replied, ‘I’d spend the first
four hours sharpening my saw.’

37. 8. Find your voice and
Inspire Others to find theirs
• Your talent (natural gifts and strengths)
• Your passion (those things that naturally
energize, excite, motivate and inspire
you)
• Your need (what the world needs to pay
to you)
• Your conscience (small voice within you
that assures you about what is right and
prompts you to actually do it.)

38. Concluding Remarks
"There are no formulas for good teaching,
and the advice of experts has but
marginal utility. If we want to grow in
our practice, we have two primary
places to go: to the inner ground from
which good teaching comes and to the
community of fellow teachers from
whom we can learn more about ourselves
and our craft”
( Palmer, 1998).

39. Dependence
Public
Victory
Private
Victory
Independence
Interdependence
Be
Proactive
Begin with
an end in mind
1st things 1st
Think win win
Synergize
Seek 1st to
understand

40. Being a teacher you are destined
for great things. Always remember,
you were born with everything you
need to succeed. You don’t have to
look anywhere else. The power
and light are in you!

41. "I've come to the frightening conclusion
That I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It's my personal approach that creates the climate.
It's my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power
to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of
inspiration.
I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides
Whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated
And a child humanized or de-humanized."

42. Thank you
Let’s work together for a better
Pakistan!