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Apologize, fix it, and move on.
What should you say if you’re caught doing something wrong? Apologize, first. Then, if you can do anything to repair the damage, do it.
All of us make mistakes. The question is, how do we respond to them? If we try to weasel out of trouble, point the finger at others, and deny responsibility, all we do is make ourselves look bad and lose the respect of those around us. All we do is show the adults involved that we are still acting like little kids. So if you get caught, don’t say, “It wasn’t me.” Or, “Those other guys were doing it first.” Or, “I didn’t know.”
If you make a mistake, have the courage to say, “I messed up, and I’m sorry. How can I fix it, or make up for it?” Then follow through. People are ready to forgive you—but only if you’re ready to take responsibility. Apologize, fix it, and move on. That kind of response will earn admiration and respect.
I once saw two students sweeping the entranceway to their school after having been caught for a minor misdeed. One of them saw this task as a punishment, while the other saw it as doing service to the school. The first one was angry at being caught and still refused to accept responsibility for what he had done. The second had admitted his mistake, apologized, and asked what he could do to balance the scales. It wasn’t a big deal, but this incident spoke volumes about each of these two individuals. They were the same age, but one was still a boy, while the other was clearly a young man on the way to becoming a responsible adult.
A few words about cheating
Have you ever copied homework from a friend? Used a “cheat-sheet” during a test? Plagiarized an essay or report? Far too many students would answer “yes”.
Why do students cheat?
First, because they are desperate. Bad habits have put them into a corner: their homework’s not done, they aren’t ready for the test, or they’ve put off writing the paper that’s almost due.
Second, they’re still thinking like little kids instead of responsible young adults. They think that if they “get away” with cheating, they will be better off. They don’t realize that they are only cheating themselves. If they earn good grades for work they didn’t do, they aren’t learning what the work was supposed to teach them. And no matter who else believes them, they will look into the mirror and see a cheater.
What’s the right thing to do if you find yourself in a corner and make the wrong choice? You already know: take responsibility. Apologize, fix it, and move on. Then when you look in the mirror, you won’t see a cheater. You’ll see someone who messed up but was courageous and smart enough to be honest about it.
This is an excerpt from Good Habits, Good Students: A Complete Guide for Students Who Want to Succeed.
Bob Duffin teaches in Mesa, Arizona. In April of this year he posted the following review of Good Habits, Good Students under the heading, “Advice that can really work”:
I teach mathematics in middle school and am always looking for high quality reference material to help my students develop better academic and personal habits. “Good Habits, Good Students” is full of good, practical advice that students understand and relate to. This year I recommended it to all of my classes. The students who read the book made favorable comments and said it would be very helpful in school and in life. There is no better reference than that.
In May another Amazon reviewer who goes by the name “BookMaven” titled his or her review, “Every 9th grade student and parent should read this book!”:
This is a great book for both students and parents. Students should use this book to check themselves at the start of high school. Too often, students find themselves in the 11th grade attempting to undo the mistakes of the first two years of high school. Read this book going into high school and you will be in a good position for starting off on the right track. Read it earlier and you will be all the better off.
Bob and BookMaven, I’m so glad that you and your students have found the book to be useful, and grateful to you for spreading the word. If you see this, please drop me an email message. Thanks!
You can read both of these reviews here.
This article from listified.com reviews eight online note-taking applications that you might find useful.
Of course, an application you like will help. But you still need to know how to take notes—how to organize them, what to write down, what to leave out, how much detail to include—and that takes practice, whether with a pencil or with a computer.
This article aimed at middle-school teachers actually applies pretty well to those teaching high school and upper elementary students as well.
The ideal, of course, would be for all teachers in a school to teach good habits—teachers, talk to your colleagues and principals!
If paper organizers, homeword diaries, etc., don’t seem helpful, you might give this new online organizer a try.
MySchoolog.com is completely free and multilingual, including versions in several European languages as well as Chinese and Japanese. (If you are a Korean you might volunteer to help create a Korean version of the site.)
I haven’t tried this myself, but the development team certainly looks like an interesting group of people. If you give it a try, leave a comment here and let us know what you think.
If you are inspired, ambitious, and motivated, acquiring good habits is easy: follow the advice on this web site, and in my book.
But if you lack inspiration, ambition, and motivation, you are unlikely to make the effort needed to acquire good habits.
What to do?
Talk to people who seem to be inspired, ambitious, and motivated. Find out what drives them. Read about people who have been inspired, ambitious, and motivated and have achieved great things as a result. Seek out people, especially, who are inspired about subjects that leave you bored: maybe they can show you something that will spark your interest. If math is not your thing, for example, find a really good math student, or teacher, and ask: what is it about math that interests and excites you?
Today a colleague began talking about his Grade 11 students. “They don’t take notes”, he said in exasperation. “Not a single one of them.”
Another colleague, overhearing us, joined in. “Isn’t that their problem?” he said. “By Grade 11 they should have figured this stuff out. We shouldn’t have to tell them to take notes and use their homework diaries.”
I wrote Good Habits, Good Students primarily for students. Teachers, for a variety of reasons, rarely teach the habits needed to succeed in school. Students are left on their own to ‘figure it out’. Unfortunately a huge number don’t figure it out, and blame themselves for their academic disappointments: I’m lazy, I’m no good, I’m stupid. I wrote the book to help students acquire the good habits they need, and to convince them that they can be successful.
But I also wrote the book hoping that teachers and schools would realize that they should be teaching habits. If they did, students would achieve much better results on the ‘material’ taught in school, and would believe in their ability to learn, and would be equipped to go on learning on their own when they are out of school. Grade 11, of course, is a bit late to begin.
Imagine what my colleagues would be saying, though, if their students had been learning and practicing good habits for years. It’s a dream, but it would not be particularly difficult or expensive to make it come true.
First: read every day!
Second: use a homework diary in every class!
And here’s a good list of online tools for students. It’s intended for university students but most of the items listed are equally useful for high school students.
The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion—political or otherwise—which suddenly seems to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our time.
—E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (1973)
So: what kinds of ideas fill your mind?
From Chapter 2 of Good Habits, Good Students:
Here’s a good way to find out where you need the most improvement: check your report card. Don’t just look at the grades, though. Check the comments your teachers write about each subject.
Far too often when students receive report cards, they check their marks and then stop reading. However, if your reports include comments from each teacher, these can be more useful than the grades when it comes to figuring out what you need to do to improve.
Not all comments by teachers are useful in this way. Some consist mostly of a standard description of what the class has studied in the previous term. There may be only a brief comment on your own work, and sometimes such comments emphasize what is most positive—which is nice, but not helpful if you’re trying to identify your weaknesses.
Sometimes, too, teachers’ comments are written in a kind of secret code I call “report-speak”. “George has a good understanding of blah blah blah”, you read. Sounds good. Actually, however, a “good” understanding may be the third– or fourth–best level, below other possibilities like “excellent” and “very good”. Once you realize this, “good understanding” doesn’t sound so good anymore.
Because comments on reports don’t always include the information you’re looking for, and because they are sometimes written in report-speak, any attempt to use your report card to discover where you most need to improve must include this vital step: asking your teachers, in person.
Before you speak with them, however, do a bit of preparatory work. Continue reading Where do you need to improve?
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