Blair High School
A Growing Leaders Case Study
Middle & High School Case Studies > Blair High School
Promoting Innovative and New Ideas through Habitudes
Jill Hensley, who teaches Agriculture at Blair High School, discusses how Habitudes for Career Ready Students helped promote creative thinking and personal growth within her students.
The most popular Habitudes with my students from last semester were “Bikes and Birds” and “Brands and Labels.”
Brands and Labels was the very first Habitude we did during the semester. I used it to set context for the class, explaining that as people, everything we do “speaks” about us and we are constantly building a brand for ourself. The interest approach to that lesson was so effective and fun for my students that we no longer refer to our tissues in the room as “Kleenex.” Instead, students will ask if I have any “Georgia Pacific Envisions” they can use (the off-brand of kleenex the school buys.) It seems so ridiculous to ask for “Georgia Pacific Envisions” but it has been a powerful reminder of how brands speak. And – it was student initiated – they have fun with it. The Habitude has created an entire language for me to address behavior – both positive and negative with.
Bikes and Birds simply blew students’ minds. When I first posed the question, “What do bikes and birds have in common?” they had no idea. When they figured out that together they make an airplane, it was fun to see students’ wheels turning about problems in their own lives. This Habitude seemed to convince my students that anyone could be a creative and innovative person; all it takes is thinking of old ideas in new ways and combinations.