Unlocking The 8th Habit for Little Leaders

The 8th Habit offers us an opportunity to think about how the youngest learners can use their unique talents and passion to make things better in their world. Join Molly, Dr. Eve, and guest Pennie Montes, Kindergarten Teacher and Lighthouse Coordinator at Chaparral Elementary in Arizona as they talk about practical ways to help early learners unlock their genius and use it to help others.

Transcript

Molly: [00:00:00] From Leader in Me Studios, I'm Molly Garcia. This is The Empowering Teacher for Early Learning. I remember hearing someone say that the meaning of life is to find your gift; the purpose of life is to give it away. Today, I hope you'll join me in my curiosity and how these pretty aspirational words that many people struggle with for their entire lives translate to our littlest leaders and preschool classrooms. How are early learning leaders starting to find their voices in Leader in Me schools.

Molly: To share some insight, I'm connecting with Pennie Montes, Kindergarten Teacher and Lighthouse Coordinator at Chaparral Elementary School in Arizona, to talk about practical ways that we can help early learners unlock their genius and use it to help others. Before I jump into this conversation with our guests, let's do a quick research connect with Eve Miller, FranklinCovey Education Director of Research. Eve, lay it on us. What does her research tell us about the connection between The 8th Habit and our youngest learners?

Eve: So let's talk about the [00:01:00] brain because recent brain research provides exciting insights into why empowering student voice is crucial. So put simply, when students actively participate in their learning, they're not just more engaged, their Brains are literally developing the neural pathways associated with critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making. this is because active engagement and choice making in learning experiences gives brain fuel to the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for these higher order thinking skills 

Molly: Yeah. Okay. Now who doesn't need more brain fuel? Right? So help us understand What it is about choice and voice that actually fuels the prefrontal cortex?

Eve: Absolutely. Okay. So when students make real choices or express their thoughts, they're actively constructing and applying knowledge rather than passively receiving it. It is that active construction [00:02:00] that increases the engagement of the prefrontal cortex.

Eve: Greater engagement of this brain region means higher-order thinking is happening, and it also means students are building the strength of their prefrontal cortex to support later learning as well.

Molly: Okay. I love this. This is fascinating. So, Eve, how can early-learning educators apply this knowledge to their classrooms?

Eve: Okay. Here are three ways that have powerful research behind them. First, create opportunities for storytelling because storytelling is this powerful tool for young children to express themselves and develop language skills. They can be their own stories, or they can be ones that they create. No matter what it is, it gives them that power of building their voice and building their stories.

Eve: The second one, practice reflective listening, where you repeat back what the student said, possibly in a rephrased [00:03:00] manner. This shows that their voice is heard and valued and encourages them to continue sharing their thoughts. And the final one, leadership roles. Early learners are capable, and excited to take on classroom leadership roles. And when they are given these opportunities, they develop a sense of ownership and voice in the classroom community.

Molly: Okay, Eve. These are things that are ready in action in our schools. There are so many golden nuggets to take away from our conversation. This is so powerful, and I cannot wait to jump into conversation with Pennie around these practical ways to bring this research to life. 

Molly: Pennie, welcome to The Empowering Teacher Podcast for Early Learning.

Pennie: Hi Molly, thank you for having me today.

Molly: So what does The 8th Habit look like in an early learning classroom?

Pennie: In an early-learning classroom, Habit 8, Find Your Voice, comes from ownership.

Pennie: Ownership of ourselves, our actions, our choices, and our [00:04:00] decisions. And then to me, that ownership helps create a classroom family, our community of learners, to where we can feel safe in our environment. We can take risks, we can support others, we can celebrate others, and in a sense they feel like they are free to be me.

Pennie: Everybody understands that we all learn differently, we all grow differently, we are all different, but we can celebrate those differences and celebrate how much we all grow and feel that safe connection within the classroom and our community of learners.

Pennie: And then they're free to be me in a sense where that no matter what we are doing in our learning we support each other's strengths, our weaknesses, and we're not afraid to maybe answer that question that we think might be silly or take that risk and have a wrong answer because we know that our [00:05:00] friends, our family will support us and help us learn from our mistakes. 

Molly: How do you support Kindergarten students in discovering their passions and talents? And how do they use them to help other students in the classroom or help the community?

Pennie: In my classroom, we have a saying, and it's called, “see a need, fill a need.” So, while we still have leadership roles, one of the things that we learn about is that a leader doesn't necessarily wait to be asked to do something. A leader will step up and do what they need to do to get things done or to make sure that everybody has a voice in what's going on and, for example, if our Pledge Leader happens to be out of the classroom, absent, tardy, whatever it might be, I don't have a substitute role.

Pennie: There are going to be kids that feel like they want to take that risk that day, and they'll step up and say, “Will you please stand up and push in your chair?” Or there might be [00:06:00] friends that'll be like, oh, I like this role. This is one of my favorites. And then they'll work amongst themselves and say, well, can I do it today?

Pennie: And then maybe you do it tomorrow. Or they try to synergize their way through on who's going to do it. 

Molly: They just jump in. They have that sense of support and family in the classroom and they feel safe, right? To take those risks. So, let's talk more about what this looks like on the daily in your classroom. What would we expect to see if we walked into your classroom with your students?

Pennie: They come in basically, and for the first 20–25 minutes, I am not running the classroom. I take attendance and I sip my coffee and I watch the kids roll. And I'll say good morning and greet them at the door, high fives, knuckles, fist bumps, hugs, whatever they want that morning. They come in, they know where their water bottle goes, their lunchbox goes, how to unpack their backpack, and then listen to announcements. And once the announcements are done, we have a Pledge Leader who then gives, after we say the pledge, then [00:07:00] gives control over to our Scholarly Leader, who asks the class to please join me at the Scholarly Leader Ball, and we go through and we talk about the eight habits, and also scholarly attributes.

Pennie: And then from there, that Scholarly Leader role will then say, it's your turn now, pass it over to the Calendar Leader, who then takes us through all those math patterns of calendar, what the day is, what tomorrow will be, what yesterday was.

Pennie: The months of the year, those things, and then goes to the morning message, and leads the morning message. So, the routine that's been set from day one in the class, we're now reading our morning message together. We're finding some of those sight words that we can read, even if we can't read them. And we're taking the risk to try to decode some of those newer words and finding those words and that leader is in charge of calling those students up.

Pennie: And my basic role is just making sure that [00:08:00] we are including everybody throughout the week, that everybody does get that turn, but usually they're doing a very good job of it themselves of making sure everybody's got that turn in and that we all get that fair Win-Win.

Molly: Oh, such great examples of just letting go, releasing, right? To be able to empower. What results have you noticed in your students?

Pennie: I feel that because they feel like they have ownership within the classroom, and they feel that they have ownership of their learning, that learning grows exponentially. They understand everybody learns differently. They understand everybody from their mistakes, but they feel empowered to, if they're going to do an assignment, they can take it to the next level.

Pennie: They can feel free to take that risk to the next level. For example, I do writing that is tiered. And my Tier 1 kiddos I also tell them, we'll take the risk to do Tier 2, and so on and so forth. [00:09:00] And so each level has a risk, the students don't stop at their level, they feel empowered to take it to the next level if they choose to.

Molly: They're owning their process and learning, taking care of each other in the classroom and that true support. Pennie, thank you for shining the light on what happens when we choose to embrace The 8th Habit and the impact that it's having in classrooms and of course, to our listeners, remember, keep shining. You've got this.