During this final meeting of the reading group we wrapped up our discussion of the book. We focused again on chapter 4 and chapter 5.  Chapter 5 discusses the role of will power and self control in success. According to the book ” Willpower is the most important keystone habit for individual success. In the last chapter you learned that keystone habits have the power to change other habits. The best way to strengthen willpower is to make it into a habit. The opening story talks about how Starbucks helped employees develop self control habits so that good decisions become automatic.  When employees are faced with difficult customers or problems at work they resort to their routines. We talked about the famous“marshmallow study” conducted in the 1960s that measured children’s self control as preschoolers.

During the group we discussed the socratic method and expectations of students being prepared for class.  We discussed the need to provide students with clear expectations of what grade they can earn in the class  We talked again about how helping students develop good study habits is the key to academic success. We discussed how important good self control is to managing a student’s academic career. Sadly many of us agree that our students do not come to KBCC with good self control habits, they are easily distracted and may start out strong but often they fall off course as the semester progresses. One of the topics discussed was helping students understand the purpose of attending college and getting students to interact and participate in the classroom so they can stay involved and engaged for the entire semester.

The second meeting of the Power of Habit reading group was held on 4/17/19 from 11:30-12:30 p.m

During this session we mostly focused on Chapter 4 Keystone Habits, or the Ballad of Paul O’Neill.  This chapter discusses the idea that keystone habits are habits are more powerful than others. These are known as keystone habits and they have the power to change how other habits work. Making a change in a keystone habit (“going for a run before work”) can start a chain reaction that over time transforms other patterns. Chapter 4 begins with a discussion of Paul O’Neill the CEO of Alcola Corporation.  When he was first appointed CEO he was able to improve productivity by focusing on the keystone habit of safety in the workplace. Keystone habits are important for our students.  If we can get our students to change keystone habits, how they prepare for class, then they may be able to transform their patterns of learning in all their classes. Most of us agree that our students are not prepared for class and for learning. They have not developed good keystone learning habits in high school and therefore they continue in the same failing patterns in college.

We also discussed how challenging it can be to get new programs started at KBCC. The difficulty of changing routines seems to be a challenge not only for students in the classroom but for Instructors working at the College.