Changing Attitudes and Behavior

Book excerpt: Changing Attitudes and Behavior: Practice Makes Permanent, the second of the Practice Makes Permanent series, argues that school performance is directly correlated to student motivation. If school administrators and teachers adopt Jensen's easy, direct, and effective ways to help students manage their feelings and focus their attention, the results will be two-fold: schools will foster a cooperative and high-performing learning community, and students will succeed academically while also mastering important social skills. To do so, both schools and students must make permanent learning their first priority--rather than temporary, superficial knowledge--so that students can take pride in- and ownership of their achievements in the classroom. Maintaining this standard will require educators to build learning activities systematically: they must understand, record, organize, and deepen knowledge. It will also require that they know simple and direct ways to change and improve the thinking that drives students' behavior, in addition to the points of leverage available to teachers when redirecting even the most distracted or distracting students. Although identifying and modifying behavior patterns can be difficult, Jensen provides tried methods that will address student motivation, unify class instruction, and get teachers and students back on track for their long-term, permanent learning goals. For more information about the author's work, please check out his educational blog here: http: //johnjensen.edublogs.org/