Tuesday, December 2, 2008

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Schools"

This article by Kathleen Kingsbury of Time Magazine speaks of how author, Stephen Covey's new book The Leader in Me is helping struggling schools become more successful as principals across the nation are applying it to their own educational settings.
The book focuses on the A.B. Combs Elementary school in Raleigh, N.C. and how the seven habits of his first book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" became a value system in this school. These seven habits include:
1. Be proactive.
2. Begin with the end in mind.
3. First things first.
4. Think Win/Win.
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.
6. Synergize.
7. Sharpen the Saw.
Test scores in reading increased from "57.4% to 89.7% after one year and math went from 77.4% to 100%". Stephen Covey states that the 7 Habits applies social skills that children need to learn in order to understand and absorb what they are learning as opposed to be taught just to perform well in testing.
I feel that the 7 Habits are those that are applicable to any subject and any type of person who is wanting to do well. The Habits Covey expresses are timeless and are not strict rules for one to follow, merely normal values that are useful in many situations, including the classroom.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

After reading this article, I can definitely see the values Stephen Covey urges upon people. I completely agree with Liz in the sense that these are in fact timeless habits we should all try to live our lives from. Putting these habits into the education aspect also is extremely helpful. Showing that the test scores have risen displays the children's willingness and also eagerness to comply and learn more.

Fred Merritt said...

The 7 habits of highly effective schools are excellent. What I like most about them is that they are not strict or specific. They are instead flexible and like Liz said can be applied to anything in life. I feel if they were stricter they might not be applicable to certain schools. An example I can think of off the top of my head is: A habit of a successful school is to have low student to teacher ratio and up to date textbooks Yeah that is probably a really good thing to have in order to be a successful school, but one can't simply apply that to a low-income school. Like I said before these habits are not like that, which to me is awesome.