Sharing Good Practice
CULTIVATING STUDENT EFFICACY
AT UNIVERSAL AMERICAN SCHOOL
CO-WRITTEN BY: MICHELLE HAAG, SUSAN PRICE, PAUDGE BRENNAN, AND SHELLEY REINHART
“Really!?,” exclaims a 10th grade girl at
Universal American School. “There’s
actual research that explains why I
always do my very best work at the last
minute?”
The research she's discovered is found
in her Myers Briggs Type Indicator
personality type profile. The MBTI
is a statistically validated tool based
Carl Jung’s theory of psychological
type, proposing that people are born
with preferred ways of interacting with
the world around them, gathering
information, making decisions and
organizing time. Insights gained
from understanding these individual
preferences are relevant for people
of all ages. Specifically, for students
at
Universal
American
School,
understanding individual preferences
through the MBTI helps build self-
efficacy and facilitates students’ self-
awareness.
Shelley
Reinhart
is
an
MBTI
Practitioner, and uses personality
theory to help students and teachers
gain self-understanding. Reinhart
administered the Murphy-Meisgeier
Type Instrument for Children to classes
of students at Universal American
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May - Jun 2019
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School. The MMTIC measures
psychological type for children under
18 years of age. Using the same model
and preferences as the MBTI, the
MMTIC gives students a sense of the
way they like to study, the ways in which
they learn best and ways to advocate
for themselves at home and with their
teachers. They can use what they
learn through the MMTIC to develop
good study habits and increase their
confidence in the classroom. Reinhart
is working with instructional coaches
Dina Coppes and Michelle Haag to
use the MMTIC as a tool to build self-
efficacy at UAS.
Universal American School is owned by
Al Futtaim and offers a full American
curriculum from grade pre-K to 12.
The elementary school uses the US
Common Core standards to inform a
rigorous Primary Years Program (IBPYP)
and secondary students can earn an
International Baccalaureate Diploma
(IBDP) as well as a US accredited high
school diploma.
A majority of UAS high school students
have reported that they organize their
time to study for summative exams
only a day or two before the date of the
Class Time
test. Fewer than 50% of Math teacher
Paudge Brennan’s 10th graders had
been attending extra tutorial sessions,
and even less completed nightly
homework. Students did not have a
workable sense of time management
and stress levels were high before
tests. Teachers were aware that not
all students were achieving their
potential.
Reinhart administered the MMTIC
to Brennan’s Math students and
worked with the teacher-coach teams
on strategies for helping students
understand how they could better use
their time for higher summative scores
and longer term retention of material.
One strategy Brennan adopted was
“Don’t Break the Chain.” Students
were asked if they thought they could
pledge to complete at least two
homework practice problems each day
for the two weeks leading up to the
exam, thereby encouraging a “chain” of
daily Math review. Almost all students
signed the large colorful posters and
agreed to NOT “break the chain,” but
after three days it became apparent
that many had already done so. By the
end of the first week, less than one-
third of the students had an unbroken