Helping Your Child to Persist

  By Angela Iadavaia-Cox On yet another long afternoon at home during the coronavirus, I was trying to set up a new bath toy with my four-year old granddaughter. It was not working. She called it a “dud.” I suggested an alternative, “time for persistence.” We pretended to be scientists, attempting different ways to position […]

Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations

  by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick “Learning is the ability to make sense out of something you observe based on your past experience and being able to take that observation and associate it with meaning.” Ruth and Art Winter Intelligent human beings learn from reflecting on and making sense of their experiences. When […]

Questioning and Problem Posing

  By Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick Co-Founders, Institute for Habits of Mind International “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination […]

Managing Impulsivity

  By Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick Co-Founders, Institute for Habits of Mind “The sign of intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.” Marya Mannes Do you ever find yourself just blurting out what comes to mind? After you say it, do you regret it? Do you find […]

Metacognition: Monitoring Your Thinking

  By Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick “When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself” Plato Game play can be a great time to strengthen your mind. Most games require strategic thinking. The problem is posed; the solution has multiple possibilities; the aim is to strategically either get to the direction most […]

Thinking Interdependently

  By Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick “Getting along well with other people is still the world’s most needed skill. With it…there is no limit to what a person can do. We need people, we need the cooperation of others. There is very little we can do alone” Earl Nightingale Did you know that […]

Finding Humor

  By Art Costa and Bena Kallick “Warning: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.” Ellie Katz Humor refers to our human ability to perceive and express a sense of the clever or amusing: What is the astronauts’ favorite place on the computer? The space bar Humor consists principally in the recognition and expression of […]

Responding with Wonderment and Awe

  By Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick “Wonder is what sets us apart from other life forms. No other species wonders about the meaning of existence or the complexity of the universe or themselves.” Herbert W. Boyer On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft zoomed within 7800 miles of Pluto snapping epic close […]

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