Habits and mindsets are at the core of authentic student learning, as often times they will be the ideas that linger when class content is long forgotten. In my classroom, I push to incorporate different habits and mindsets into my curriculum in order to enhance problem solving, promote life skills and equip students to adapt to an ever-changing world. Developing certain habits, mindsets and character strengths are critical towards the development of a growth mindset in both educators and students. Particularly the aspects of Persistence, Questioning and Posing Problems, Taking Responsible Risks and Learning Continuously are at the backbone of building growth mindsets. The idea of instilling not giving up in students and pushing through adversity is a key component to growth and achievement. In my class I push my students to replace phrases such as "I don't understand" to "I don't understand...yet." As our students build a foundation of knowledge, they can continue to expand their base through constantly questioning and reinventing their understanding of the world around them. In my own classroom, I have seen much success in empowering my students not to passively accept their social constructions, but ask why our system is structured how it is so they can envision how to make changes. Taking calculated risks builds on this same principle that students need to be willing to take reasonable changes in order to continue to grow. Finally, committing towards being a life long learner insures that students "always strive for improvement and always grow. In order to highlight habits and mindsets in my classroom I included an explicit lesson in which habits and mindsets are the primary topic for the lesson. Then over the course of the year I began to blend themes from habits and mindsets into standard social studies lessons, which have also been included below.