We hope you're practicing and enjoying the attributes of a micro moment on a daily basis. They're quick, and great, for reinforcing and developing character strengths and skills. But they're not necessarily the right venue for a lengthy introduction or exploration of character. That leads us to macro structures. A macro structure is any intentionally created structure, system, or routine that, explicitly or implicitly is designed to teach character. Your school and class already have tons of existing structures and systems after all school itself is a structure. Let's take a look at two examples. Here in New York City, tons of schools take annual field trips to places like museums and ice skating. Let's look at ice skating. Many kids don't know how to ice skate. So, the trips are just an opportunity to run around, fall down a lot, try to learn how to skate. Kids love it, but you can turn this field trip into a field lesson by being more intentional with the planning as a character macro structure. Running around still happens. Falling down, still happens. Kids loving it, still happens, but what happens also are intentional experiences and conversations around learning new skills. Being in a growth mindset, working on getting over frustration quickly, and the importance of engaging in deliberate practice. It's important to note that we can maximize the effectiveness' macro structure, and quite frankly, most macro structures, by making the character connection explicit. This is particularly true with elementary and middle school kids, and also particularly true early on when you're first using the macro structure. >> You have 20 minutes, go ahead. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> This second example is a particular passion of mine. Independent practice. Working independently with focus is an absolutely essential component of grit and of life. Sustained, structured, and rigorous independent practice, gives our kids the chance to live so many of the key character behaviors. To finish what they start, to work through something hard, to resist distractions, to explore new things. The list can go on and on, and while we're not focusing this course on lesson planning, I would argue that the gold standard for independent practice is approximately one third of our classroom time. Be it field lessons, independent practice, or virtually anything else, when you intentionally infuse structure, systems, and routines with character, they become macro structures. To be effective, all macro structures have to have the following four elements. One, recurring. A macro structure can happen every day, as in a kindergarten morning meeting, where some students share, and other students learn to listen and ask their peers questions. They can happen every week in a trust circle or advisory class, or every ten weeks in a school assembly. They can happen daily in the case of independent practice in your lesson plans. The rate of occurrence can vary, but they have to be repeated, recurring, and sustained over a long period of time. Two, our macro structures have to be proactively planned. We want to introduce character strengths like social intelligence, self-control, or grit before there's a problem. Let's not wait for a lack of self-control to actually talk about self-control. Three, macro structures have to be active. There's a tendency to think that a macro structure is where the teacher gets in the quote unquote pulpit and preaches to the flock. But if the students aren't actively experiencing the lesson, if they aren't building their own muscle memory, then more than likely it's not really going to stick. Let's not just talk about group work. Let's do group work. Let's not just talk about gratitude. Let's have students give shout-outs and write their own gratitude letters. Four, effective macrostructures have to be aligned. If we're drawing a connection to social intelligence after our kids spend 30 minutes with silent, sustained reading. I just don't see how that's going to feel really authentic. The activity in the macro structure needs to clearly and naturally link to a character strength or skill. So that when we make the connection a light bulb goes on for our kids. This is where it's really helpful to think about the power of our co-curriculars as macro structures. Basketball, sports, art, chess, drama, music, and dance, they're effective and natural macro structures because they're recurring proactively planned, incredibly active, and aligned. That's why so many of us remember co curriculars as a place where we developed and practiced our character skills. There are an infinite number of macro structures. Let's get creative, and let's seamlessly integrate them with our academic instruction. There's a Goldilocks principle at work here for sure. Too much is too much. Too little is too little. We want to get the ratio just right.
