Five Minds for the Future

At Heart House, one of our core beliefs is that children are "smart" in different ways. We honor the multiple intelligences of our Heart House children and design our program accordingly.
We base this belief on the work of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, first published in his book, Frames of Mind. For a great summary of the theory of multiple intelligences, you might enjoy our blog posting, The Many Kinds of Smart. (http://hhaustin.blogspot.com/2008/03/many-kinds-of-smart.html)

Our book recommendation >> The staff at Heart House has been reading Gardner's newest book, Five Minds for the Future, which outlines the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead. One of the reasons for our excitement is that we passionately believe we are supporting the cultivation and development of each of these indentified mindsets needed for the future in our Heart House children. For example:

• The Disciplinary Mind, the mastery of major schools of thought, including science, mathematics, and history, and of at least one professional craft. Our job at Heart House is to RECONNECT children with the joy of learning. Heart House aligns its "disguised learning" with AISD's emphasis on a solid education in the fundamentals of these core subjects. Additionally, 100% of our curriculum aligns with TEKS.
  
• The Synthesizing Mind, the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others. Heart House integrates multiple disciplines into our monthly themes, allowing students to see how ideas are connected. Teaching in such a contextual manner promotes collaboration, critical thinking, and knowledge retention.
  
• The Creating Mind: the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomena. As part of Heart House's dedication to producing critical thinkers, we see creativity as the highest level of critical thinking, when expressed by synthesizing information gathered from the monthly theme to create a new idea, product, or point of view.
  
• The Respectful Mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings and human groups. Cultivating emotional and interpersonal intelligence among children, staff members, volunteers, and the greater community is modeled and rewarded at Heart House.
  
• The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of one's responsibilities as a worker and as a citizen. We rigorously ask our students what they need to do for their work to be excellent in quality and ethical in conduct, and then how they might follow through with those responsibilities.

Find out more about our program by clicking here.