Self-Reflection

Why? Until you can honestly reflect and know yourself, you cannot improve yourself or develop new habits.

What? Through effective self-reflection, students identify their emotions, triggers, strengths, and areas for growth.

Ongoing Implementation: Students will constantly reflect on their own thoughts, feelings, and actions as they pertain to the various other Leadership Habits that they are learning.

SR.1 Identifying strengths:  Students are able to identify their personal strengths and use “positive traits” vocabulary to describe themselves and their personalities.

SR.2 Identifying areas for growth:  Students are able to identify their personal areas for growth and use Growth Mindset language to describe these areas.

SR.3 Identifying emotional triggers: Students are able to identify different “triggers” that cause them to quickly lose control of emotions and/or make poor decisions for themselves.

SR.4 Backwards Reflection: Students are able to reflect backwards from a triggering situation and identify different actions, behaviors, and situations that led to a particular reaction.  

SR.5 Backwards Mapping: Students are able to “map” different Coping Skills onto a backwards reflection as a way to plan for successful management of similar triggering situations in the future.

Learning from Failure

Why? Accepting opportunities to try and fail as learning opportunities is a key aspect of persistence and appropriate risk-taking.  Developing a habit of learning from failure helps develop self-confidence and contributes to a Growth Mindset.

What? Students will learn how neurons work, identify methods to increase persistence, and learn how our brains make memories and use “short-cuts” to view the world.

Ongoing Implementation: Students will be pushed to regularly debrief activities and situations to find what did not go well - and how to do better the next time.

LF.1 Neurons and Brain Learning Foundations:  Students are able to describe how the development of neuronal pathways leads to learning and skill development.

LF.2 Identifying past examples of successful persistence: Students are able to identify successes from their past that necessitated persistence and describe what caused them to persist.

LF.3 Accountable self-talk for persistence: Students are able to demonstrate the use of “accountable self-talk” stems and internal messages to help them persist in the face of struggle.  

LF.4 Persistence and the phases of practice: Students are able to describe the different phases of practice and when persistence is most necessary for successful practice.

LF.5 Neurons and Brain Learning Memory: Students are able to describe how neuronal connections are leveraged for the intentional access of memories and other information.

LF.6 Neurons and Brain Learning Heuristics: Students are able to describe how the brain utilizes heuristics for short-hand memory and learning, and the benefits and costs of their use.

LF.7 Neurons and Brain Learning Errors and Fallacies:  Students are able to describe common brain learning errors and logical fallacies that lead to inaccurate perceptions and biases.

Deliberate Practice for Growth

Why? We often practice skills and develop habits in ways that actually make us worse.  Deliberate practice for growth enables students to determine effective practice habits that help them improve - especially in areas where they are “stuck” or feel less successful.    

What? Students will leverage deliberate practice to aid in successful achievement of goals, academic growth, and Growth Mindset.

Implementation: Students will regularly set and revise goals, check each other’s progress, and think through the quality of their practice of challenging skills .

DPG.1 Setting SMART Goals: Students are able to write effective and relevant SMART goals for personal growth.

DPG.2 Intro to Growth Mindset: Students are able to describe the difference between Growth and Fixed Mindsets and how each can contribute to successful (or ineffective) practice.  

DPG.3 Intro to Habit Loops: Students are able to describe the development of personal “habit loops” and to identify personal habit loops.

DPG.4 Finding/studying expert resources: Students are able to identify and utilize expert resources for study as a first step towards effective practice.  

DPG.5 Getting timely feedback: Students are able to identify optimal timing for practice feedback and to describe different types of effective feedback.  

DPG.6 Practice logistics: Students are able to describe the importance of selecting an appropriate time and place for practice and demonstrate follow through on a practice plan.

DPG.7 Hi-jacking Habit Loops: Students are able to identify personal habit loops in which costs outweigh benefits and to develop effective substitute behaviors for the development of beneficial replacement habits.

Being a Pro-Active Problem Solver

Why? Pro-active problem solving addresses root causes and contributes to successful goal-setting and achievement, “big-picture” understanding, and self-efficacy.  This is in contrast to reactionary problem solving which focuses on momentary band-aids without bringing about lasting change.

What? Students will demonstrate strategic planning with obstacles in mind (if-then thinking), understanding cause and effect, and taking into account situational behavior to create long-term plans and solutions.

Ongoing Implementation: Students will regularly be encouraged to reflect on how they could have done things differently for success and how to create plans to implement those changes to avoid issues in the future.

PPS.1 Identifying potential obstacles: Students are able to identify potential obstacles to reaching personal goals.

PPS.2 Forward Mapping: Students are able to plan ahead and develop strategies to overcome potential obstacles to reaching personal goals.

PPS.3 Seeking big-picture context: Students are able to determine larger context of a particular problem or situation to help select better strategies for solving the problem.

PPS.4 Design Process Root Cause Determinations: Students are able to use Design Process empathy tools to determine root causes of a problem situation.  

Developing and Practicing Coping Skills

Why? Coping Skills enable students to manage their emotions and prevent situations outside of their control from controlling them.  They also help students reach long-term mental health and balance, making them more likely to regularly exhibit the leadership habits we want to instill in them.

What? Students will work from menus of options to select coping skills for different types of situations (from those meant to manage emotions in the moment to long-term mental and physical health management).  

Ongoing Implementation: Students will regularly reflect on coping skills they are or are not using effectively, and what new skills they may need to develop to better manage emotions.

CS.1 Buying Time Coping Skills:  Students are able to use various coping skills to help them calm down and make better decisions when triggered in the moment.

CS.2 Limiting Temptation Coping Skills: Students are able to use various coping skills to increase personal self-control and focus in the face of boredom, anxiety, or excess energy.

CS.3 Healthy Self-Expression Coping Skills: Students are able to use various coping skills to productively cope with upsetting or emotional situations after the fact (includes managing low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression).

CS.4 Mindfulness and Balance Coping Skills: Students are able to use various coping skills to achieve long-term emotional self-management for physical and mental health.

Listening to Understand

Why? Listening to Understand involves being present and open to understanding others’ explicit and implicit needs. This is a major component of empathy and contributes to more effective root cause analysis and problem solving, leading to improved relationships, conflict resolution, and “big picture” understanding.

What? Students will go through various “levels” of listening - from typical “active listening” skills to more nuanced empathy interviews and questioning sequences.

Ongoing Implementation: Students will regularly have opportunities to practice various levels of listening with their Family Group members in order to better support each other.

LU.1 Active Listening: Students are able to demonstrate various habits (tracking, nodding, questioning, etc.) to show others that they are listening.

LU.2 Creating a Safe Space for Sharing: Students are able to demonstrate the use of various tools to create a  non-judgmental and supportive space for others to share what they want to share.  

LU.3 Deep Listening: Students are able to demonstrate the use of empathy interviewing tools to help others share what they need to share in order to to find root causes of personal problems.

LU.4 Code-switching: Students are able to describe the importance of “Code Switching” and determine implicit cultural norms in various situations.

LU.5 Neurons and Brain Learning Priming: Students are able to describe the origins and consequences of implicit bias and demonstrate various methods for countering the effects of priming.

Speaking to be Heard

Why? Speaking to be Heard is effective self-advocacy - speaking honestly in a way that encourages others to want to listen and respond positively. This improves social relationships (with peers and non-peers) and encourages conflict resolution; it also increases self-efficacy and successful goal achievement.

What? Students will learn various considerations that enable more successful speaking to be heard, as well as personal transparency, accountability, and the ability to “code-switch” or read and adjust to situational contexts.

Ongoing Implementation: Students will be consistently encouraged to reflect on how they are speaking or asking for help, and how they can do so differently to increase the chances of getting help, or to get their needs met.

SH.1 Determining What I Really Want: Students are able to identify their own personal needs and desires and how they change in different situations.  

SH.2 Asking for Help:  Students are able to ask specific questions leveraging polite language and tone to get more effective and efficient help from others.

SH.2.i Asking for Help (anti-bullying): Students are able to identify bullying situations and demonstrate how to ask for help when they are being bullied.

SH.3 Right time and place: Students are able to describe the importance of time and place in being heard in a conversation and can identify appropriate times and places for different types of conversations.

SH.3.i Appropriate Sharing: Students are able to identify topics that are appropriate for sharing in large groups and those that should be shared privately with trusted adults.

SH.4 Rebuilding Trust: Students are able to develop appropriate plans for rebuilding trust with others after making a hurtful mistake.  

SH.5 Disagreement as a Discussion:  Students are able to express disagreement in a way that invites clarification and conversation.

SH.5.i Disagreement as a Discussion (anti-bullying): Students are able to demonstrate the use of various strategies to stand up for themselves in the face of bullying.

SH.6 Self-Advocacy: Students are able to productively express unpopular opinions and honestly share in the face of group disagreement or inequity.  

SH.6.i Bystander Intervention (anti-bullying): Students are able to create and utilize Bystander Intervention plans to discourage group bullying of others.

SH.7 Code-switching: Students are able to appropriately adapt to changing cultural norms in various situations.

SH.8.i Making a Proposal for Personal Change: Students are able to create convincing proposals for change that affects them on a personal level.  

SH.8.ii Making a Proposal for Community Change: Students are able to create professional proposals for change at an organizational or community level.  

Giving Appropriate and Effective Feedback

Why? This is the foundation of true Leadership, which is being able to help others grow and improve. This contributes to conflict resolution, team building, and community success.

What? Students will move from practicing giving meaningful praise to using different forms of feedback/assessment tools with their peers, to giving constructive, meaningful feedback.  

Ongoing Implementation: Students will have regular opportunities to assess and give feedback to their Family Group members regarding their goals, strategies for achieving those goals, and progress with select Leadership Habits.

EF.1 Giving Meaningful Praise: Students are able to use the Describe-Label-Praise (DLP) method of giving praise to show appreciation for their peers and adults in their lives.

EF.2 Using a Check-List for Objective Assessment:  Students are able to utilize a check-list format for objectively evaluating and assessing their peers’ work and actions, as well as their own.

EF.3 Using a Rubric for Objective Assessment: Students are able to utilize a rubric format for objectively evaluating and assessing their peers’ work and actions, as well as their own.

EF.4 Selecting High-leverage Feedback:  Students are able to differentiate between high-leverage feedback and additional, overwhelming feedback when observing and critiquing their peers.

EF.5 Giving Helpful Feedback:  Students are able to deliver feedback effectively, leveraging the use of various feedback structures for giving feedback that others are willing to hear and act upon.

EF.6 Feedback Follow-up: Students are able to develop plans for following up on feedback given to others to track progress and growth.  

Seeking New Perspectives

Why? Seeking new perspectives involves understanding that people can have different points of view on the same situation and valuing those viewpoints - which leads to better understanding of human social interactions.

What? Students will learn to identify their own culture, viewpoints, and comfort zones and push themselves to learn about those that differ from their own.

Ongoing Implementation: Students will regularly be asked to imagine other perspectives in various situations, identify their own beliefs, and to practice eliciting new perspectives from their peers and adults.

NP.1 Imagining other perspectives: Students are able to imagine and describe multiple competing perspectives on the same or similar situations.  

NP.2 Identifying personal cultural identity, and comfort zones: Students are able to identify their personal cultural identities and what is in or outside of their personal comfort zones.  

NP.3 Valuing perspectives: Students are able to describe the value of multiple perspectives on a particular situation.

NP.4 Seeking out new experiences: Students are able to identify experiences outside of their comfort zones and to create opportunities to participate in those experiences.  

NP.5 Seeking out new/uncomfortable perspectives: Students are able to identify perspectives outside of their personal comfort zones and to create opportunities to engage in conversation to understand those perspectives.

Finding Middle Ground

Why? Creating “win-win” situations to effectively mediate conflict and create buy-in with groups. Contributes to improved group success, community building, and general conflict resolution and positive social relationships.

What? Students will learn to determine underlying needs and then propose a compromise or help peers build collaborative solutions to a problem.

Ongoing Implementation: Students will be provided with regular opportunities to practice compromise and collaboration within Family Groups throughout the year.

MG.1 Determining Needs: Students are able to determine the underlying needs of various parties in a given situation.  

MG.2 Proposing a Compromise: Students are able to create compromise solutions that address multiple parties’ needs in a given situation.

MG.3 Building a collaborative solution: Students are able to facilitate the process of building collaborative solutions with multiple parties with different needs.  

Creative Thinking

Why? Contributes to higher-order problem solving, innovation, and increased adaptability and flexibility.

What? Students will begin with simple use of visuals, metaphors, and observation before moving into creative questioning and design thinking to be better able to make connections between seemingly unlike things (and systems).

Ongoing Implementation: Students will regularly learn PLT concepts through key metaphors, while regularly practicing creative visualization, observation, and design thinking to solve problems.

CT.1 Understanding visual representation of ideas: Students are able to interpret visual representations of ideas and describe their possible meanings.

CT.2 Understanding metaphors: Students are able to describe the connection between metaphors and the concrete concepts they are explaining.

CT.3 Practicing curiosity: Students are able to ask “curious questions” to gain  deeper understanding about seemingly normal processes, systems, and things.  

CT.4 Deep observation and awareness of one’s environment: Students are able to observe and make note of the minutiae and subtleties of their surroundings under varying circumstances.

CT.5 Creating visual representations of ideas:  Students are able to create original visual representations to communicate abstract ideas.  

CT.6 Creating metaphors: Students are able to create original metaphors to make abstract concepts more understandable.

CT.7 Creative questioning:  Students are able to ask divergent questions to create novel solutions to problems.  

CT.8 Design Process Iteration and Prototyping: Students are able to describe the benefits of rapid prototyping and iteration and use them to find better solutions to problems.  

CT.9 Systems Thinking: Students are able to describe how diverse aspects of a given system work together to generate particular results. 

Developing a Critical Consciousness

Why? Developing an understanding of the dynamics of the world around you, and your place within that world (and those dynamics). Contributes to improved social networking and self-advocacy, big picture understanding and systems thinking.

What? Students will begin with understanding and management of peer pressure before moving into the macro level of implicit culture building, bias, and stereotypes.

Implementation: Students will constantly reflect on how different messages affect their own sense of identity and how to push back against those messages.

DCC.1 Internal Peer Pressure: Students are able to identify different negative messaging that they receive from peers or media that prevent them from doing what they want to or know is right.

DCC.2 Coping with Peer Pressure: Students are able to demonstrate the use of various strategies to minimize the effects of peer pressure on their own decisions and actions.

DCC.3 Going against Peer Pressure: Students are able to demonstrate the use of various strategies to counter peer pressure and create safe spaces for their peers.

DCC.4 Identifying implicit and explicit culture: Students are able to describe how implicit and explicit cultures are developed and identify the implicit and explicit cultural norms of various groups they are part of.

DCC.5 Valuing diverse perspectives: Students are able to describe the intrinsic and extrinsic value of diverse perspectives and demonstrate the use of various strategies to increase the diversity of a group.

DCC.6 Neurons and Brain Learning Grouping and Stereotyping: Students are able to describe the neurology behind human grouping and stereotyping tendencies and demonstrate the use of strategies to minimize these tendencies.  

DCC.7 The Media: Students are able to describe the various ways dominant-group dynamics are reinforced by the media and to implement strategies for countering these messages.

DCC.8 Developing a Critical Identity: Students are able to describe their personal critical cultural identity in relation to the communities and world around them and to develop a strategic plan for reinforcing and valuing this identity in the face of minority group status.  

Career Readiness

Why? While all of the previous Leadership Habits are key to long-term college and career success, there are very specific career-related skills that students need to learn in order to find, get, and keep a job.

What? Students will begin with simple time and task management and organization skills before moving on to interviewing and public perception management.

Implementation: Students will be expected to increase their use of various professional skills in class and school as they grow through the program.  

CR.1 Organization: Students are able to organize their materials to prevent loss and lead to efficient finding of materials when needed.  

CR.2 Time Management: Students are able to effectively meet deadlines, consistently make it to meetings and appointments on time and efficiently manage time spent on tasks.  

CR.3 Task Management: Students are able to prioritize tasks so that all important tasks are completed successfully.

CR.4 Non-verbal Professional Communications: Students are able to write and format professional resumes, cover letters, and information requests.  

CR.5 Interviewing: Students are able to effectively prepare for and participate in informational and position interviews, both in groups and individually.  

CR.6 Managing Public Identity: Students are able to manage their public identities and social media to increase their level of perceived professionalism and hireability.