The Happiness Advantage

Shawn Anchor has done extensive research into what makes some people more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive. He has distilled his findings into his "seven principles" which form the backbone of his book "The Happiness Advantage". The principles are:

"THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES 

1- The Happiness Advantage— Because positive brains have a biological advantage over brains that are neutral or negative, this principle teaches us how to retrain our brains to capitalize on positivity and improve our productivity and performance. 

2-The Fulcrum and the Lever— How we experience the world, and our ability to succeed within it, constantly changes based on our mindset. This principle teaches us how we can adjust our mindset (our fulcrum) in a way that gives us the power (the lever) to be more fulfilled and successful. 

3-The Tetris Effect— When our brains get stuck in a  pattern that focuses on stress, negativity, and failure, we set ourselves up to fail. This principle teaches us how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see— and seize— opportunity wherever we look. 

4- Falling Up— In the midst of defeat, stress, and crisis, our brains map different paths to help us cope. This principle is about finding the mental path that not only leads us up out of failure or suffering, but teaches us to be happier and more successful because of it. 

5- The Zorro Circle— When challenges loom and we get overwhelmed, our rational brains can get hijacked by emotions. This principle teaches us how to regain control by focusing first on small, manageable goals, and then gradually expanding our circle to achieve bigger and bigger ones. 

6- The 20- Second Rule— Sustaining lasting change often feels impossible because our willpower is limited. And when willpower fails, we fall back on our old habits and succumb to the path of least resistance. This principle shows how, by making small energy adjustments, we can reroute the path of least resistance and replace bad habits with good ones. 

7-Social Investment— In the midst of challenges and stress, some people choose to hunker down and retreat within themselves. But the most successful people invest in   their friends, peers, and family members to propel themselves forward. This principle teaches us how to invest more in one of the greatest predictors of success and excellence— our social support network."

On reflection some of the possible implications of these for my primary classroom and my pupils are:
1- Happy students have brains ready for learning.
2- A Growth mindset and a discussion about how we can change how we view situations to improve our happiness are essential learning for pupils.
3- Remember to keep the focus positive for assessments and evaluations.
4- Have lots of discussions about finding the best way out of tricky situations and challenges; this has a strong link with the language of learning.
5- Start with small, achievable goals.
6- Start building good habits with one easy to take step.
7- Take teaching the pupils team work skills very seriously and help them to build up a community of learners.

Daniel J. Levitin , "The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload"

"Successful people are expert at categorizing useful versus distracting knowledge. How do they do it?"

Daniel Levitin is an American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, best-selling author, and also rather interestingly a musician and record producer who has worked with artists such as The Grateful Dead!

I really enjoyed the first half of this book where he explained how our brains switch from mind-wandering-type thought to more focused task-orientated thought regulated by different parts of our brain. He also talked about the problems of modern life and the costs of multi-tasking and too much choice.

I found this part useful:

"The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world. If we can remove some or all of the process from our brains and put it out into the physical world, we are less likely to make mistakes. This is not because of the limited capacity of our brains— rather, it’s because of the nature of memory storage and retrieval in our brains: Memory processes can easily become distracted or confounded by other, similar items. Active sorting is just one of many ways of using the physical world to organize your mind. The information you need is in the physical pile there , not crowded in your head up here . Successful people have devised dozens of ways to do this, physical reminders in their homes, cars, offices, and throughout their lives to shift the burden of remembering from their brains to their environment."

He then went on to talk about the advantages of good old-fashioned notebooks and index cards. Having spent some time trying to use mind mapping software and failed, this really resonated with me.

"Imagine carrying a stack of 3 x 5 index cards with you wherever you go. When you get an idea for something you’re working on, you put it on one card. If you remember something you need to do later, you put that on a card. You’re sitting on a bus and suddenly remember some people you need to call and some things you need to pick up at the hardware store— that’s several more cards. You’ve figured out how to solve that problem your sister is having with her husband— that goes on a card. Every time any thought intrudes on what you’re doing, you write it down."

"For the 3 x 5 system to work best, the rule is one idea or task per card— this ensures that you can easily find it and dispose of it when it’s been dealt with. One piece of information per card allows for rapid sorting and re- sorting, and it provides random access, meaning that you can access any idea on its own, take it out of the stack without dislocating another idea, and put it adjacent in the stack to similar ideas. Over time, your idea of what is similar or what binds different ideas together may change, and this system— because it is random and not sequential— allows for that flexibility."

I am going to try this for my Summer projects and for the pupils' Learning Wall in the classroom next session.

Growth Mindset

I've read quite a bit about the importance of cultivating a growth mindset and Carol Dweck's work and heard her talk in Edinburgh and seen her popular TED video clip so I wasn't too sure if it was worth readingt her book. However, having been exasperated at myself and my negative self-talk when it came to my running I thought I could probably do with a Growth Mindset boot camp and bought her book ("Mindset" by Carol Dweck, 2006). I thought it was really worthwhile and if you were only going to read one CPD book this year, I would recommend this one.

I really liked this diagram:

Some points that I made a note of were:

The link between attachment disorder and a fixed mindset.
How sometimes it's just more comforting to maintain a fixed mindset.
We can shift between one mindset and the other and it will probably be different for different areas, e.g. many people believe they can't get better at drawing.
A fixed mindset means that we are less open to constructive feedback.

During a plenary or at the end of the day is a good time to promote a growth mindset with pupils, and Dweck recommends asking these sort of questions: “What did you learn today?
What mistake did you make that taught you something? What did you try hard at today?”

Discussing how to deal with children who are displaying a fixed mindset she says, "When your fixed-mindset son tells stories about doing things better than other children, everyone says, “Yeah, but what did you learn?” When he talks about how easy everything is for him in school, you all say, “Oh, that’s too bad. You’re not learning. Can you find something harder to do so you could learn more?” When he boasts about being a champ, you say, “Champs are the people who work the hardest. You can become a champ. Tomorrow tell me something you’ve done to become a champ.” Poor kid, it’s a conspiracy. In the long run, he doesn’t stand a chance!"

She believes we should ask ourselves, "What are the opportunities for learning and growth today? For myself? For the people around me?" And having done that and thought of the opportunities, formed a plan, and asked oneself: "When, where, and how will I embark on my plan?" Stirring stuff, and I'm sure she probably does do that.

Today was our first day back at school after the holidays and I tried to start putting some of the ideas into practice. As part of our discussions on our success criteria for our art lesson I included two extra questions, which were: Can you stick at the task even though it's tricky? Did you learn from a mistake (slashed out) learning opportunity? And there was a lot of good talk about these ideas.

Checklists and Teaching

I have just finished reading "The Checklist Manifesto - how to get things right" by Atul Gawande, 2011, and here are some notes I made on it:

• Atul Gawande is a surgeon and author. He was asked to lead the WHO's program to reduce avoidable deaths from surgery. Gawande looked at successful global public health programmes and noted many used simple checklists. He then went on to research the use of checklists for flying planes and building skyscrapers. He decided that if checklists could be used in those complex cases they could also be used for surgery.   

• The checklists prepared by Boeing for pilots are put into handbooks which are spiral bound with yellow tabs. Each checklist was brief, often only a few lines on a page in a large font and each one applied to a different situation. 

• Some of the aviation checklists were for everyday routines, such as starting the engines, the others were for non-routine events, such as an engine failure. 

• Boeing had found that good checklists were precise, to the point and easy to use but did not spell out everything; instead they provided reminders of important steps that pilots might miss. Five to nine items seemed to be the maximum to keep them in the limit of working memory. The checklists also needed to be intensely tested by using flight simulators and by reviewing accidents and near-misses.

• When making a checklist there needed to be clear pause points when the checklist is used (unless it was started by a warning light or the like). Then it could be of two types: a DO-CONFIRM checklist or a READ-DO checklist. A DO-CONFIRM checklist is when people did their jobs from memory and then paused while the list was read out and they confirmed the items.  A READ-DO checklist was when each item was done one after the other.  

• Interestingly, the book notes that there is a great deal of reluctance by people to use checklists as they are seen as stifling and prescriptive and yet, when properly prepared, they have proven benefits and allow people more mental time and space to take important decisions. 

It seems to me that there are several examples of where we use checklists at school already. For instance:

• School trip planning
• Risk assessments for trips and activities
• Fire drills
• Safeguarding flow charts
• Success criteria for pupils
• Health checklists, for example by the box where pupils keep spare inhalers in school I have a card about what to do if a pupil has an epileptic fit, an asthma attack or a head injury. 

Things to try out now for myself:

• Try considering the points for good checklists when writing success criteria. 
• Write one with the pupils for an end-of-day routine as they had already suggested for their classroom jobs having a pupil to do a last check that no one had left anything behind, a source of much woe for some pupils. 
• Collect the checklists that I already have an put them in one indexed binder. 
• Consider other areas where checklists might be useful, eg planning.

Higher Order Questions to Review History Topic

Towards the end of our Scottish History topic for my P4 and P5 pupils I was struggling to come up with higher order thinking questions to review their learning. One problem was that at their age and level of understanding many of the higher order tasks would be superficial.

Eventually, we came up with the idea of a photo quiz: the pupils would have to come up with a connection between photographs of things that you can see today with their link to the past.  I think that this would be an example of Application (Transferring) in the Bloom's taxonomy as the pupils had to apply their learning to a context different from the one in which it was originally learned.

It worked out well as the children enjoyed the photo quiz activity and then they chose one of the photos to do more personal research on and write a report on; these were then put into folders with the pictures on the cover for a photo quiz for the parents as part of our Scottish history exhibition at the end of our topic.

Answers below, in case you were wondering:














Wall is part of Hadrian's Wall - links with Roman invasion and retreat from Scotland.
Stone is a Pictish Stone - links with the Picts and their developing organization after the Romans retreated.
Sign is from the Shetlands and the name has a Norse origin, as many places around the coast do, as it was founded by the Vikings.
Song "Flower of Scotland" is sung at rugby matches as an unofficial national anthem and is about Robert the Bruce's victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.
Song "Skye Boat Song" is about Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape over to Skye after Culloden in 1746.
The ruined croft house links with the Highland Clearances which took place in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The photograph of George Street and the Newtown architecture link with the Georgian extension of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment.
The last photo shows a Tartan Day Parade in New York and links with Scottish emigration during the time of the Highland Clearances.

Mojo and Flow

After writing about my teaching mojo, I picked up Daniel Pink's  "Drive, the surprising truth about what motivates us". In it he talks about the work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 70's on flow.
 "Csikszentmihalyi conducted an experiment in which he asked people to record all the things they did in their lives that were “noninstrumental”— that is, small activities they undertook not out of obligation or to achieve a particular objective, but because they enjoyed them. Then he issued the following set of instructions: Beginning [morning of target date], when you wake up and until 9:00 PM, we would like you to act in a normal way, doing all the things you have to do, but not doing anything that is “play” or “noninstrumental.” In other words, he and his research team directed participants to scrub their lives of flow." (Daniel H. Pink, 2009).

The results were striking: after only a couple of day the adults reported severe enough psychological symptoms as to have to end the experiment. These included:

• Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge
• Being easily fatigued 
• Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank 
• Irritability 
• Muscle tension 
• Sleep disturbance 

This list sounded horribly reminiscent of difficult times when I felt stressed, and on reflection it is not surprising that losing your feeling of self control would be so damaging!

Also it makes me wonder how the children I teach feel. How many of them enjoy their play? How often do they feel a sense of flow from the tasks that I give themselves? Hmm...! I guess this will be a good point to ponder for my planning for next term and as I consider how to include personalisation and choice.

Teaching Mojo

John Hattie in "Visible Learning for Teachers" talks about inspired teaching and teachers and quotes Steele who said, "These teachers are firmly convinced that they are responsible for student learning and consistently bend their efforts toward doing a better job every day." This really struck a chord with me as I reflected on a past professional challenge which had nearly zapped all my teaching mojo out of me. Looking back I think the main thing I need to take from it, if I am ever in the same situation, is that you have to continue to believe your actions can still make a positive difference. 

My checklist for teachers struggling with their teaching mojo is:

1. Always believe that you can be an agent for positive change, and act accordingly.

2. Take time to look after yourself, physically and mentally.

3. Make time to get outside and look up at the sky (Thanks to Lottie for this advice.)

4. Find people who you can trust to talk to about things, preferably from outside your work environment as it might help you to put things in perspective. 

5. Try out new things in your leisure time, especially to remind yourself that teaching does not define you.

6. If you are feeling overwhelmed, focus on one small positive step at a time.

7. Exercise is really important: you'll reset your stress hormone levels and sleep better.