Curriculum: Relevent, Flexible, Personalized

"Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day
and at last we cannot break it" -Horace Mann (1796-1859)

A combination of the Project Based Learning approach and Art Costa's 16 Habits of Mind will prepare students for today and tomorrow. Project Based Learning would provide students with the opportunity to use available techology and other tools to engage with, deepen understandings and contribute insights on issues in the real world. Conceptual understandings drawn from interdisciplinary issues/studies might become the content for authentic real-world projects. The emphasis will shift from instruction to construction and from task analysis to problem solving.

A Habit of Mind is defined as "having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known: dichotomies, dilemmas, enigmas and uncertainties." Project Based Learning approach would provide the problems, dichotomies, dilemmas that challenge students to use strategic reasoning, insightfulness, perseverance, creativity and craftsmanship. Costa maintains, "The critical attribute of intelligent human beings is not only having information, but also knowing how to act on it."

These 16 Habits of Mind by Costa and Kallick will help students successfully navigate in a digital age.
1. Persisting
2. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
3. Managing impassivity
4. Gathering data through all the senses
5. Listening with understanding and empathy
6. Creating, imagining, innovating
7. Thinking flexibly
8. Responding with wonderment and awe
9. Thinking about thinking (meta cognition)
10.Taking responsible risks
11.Striving for accuracy
12.Finding humor
13.Questioning and posing problems
14.Thinking interdependently
15.Applying past knowledge to new situations