Perhaps you’ve made New Year’s Resolutions. But have you made measurable goals for your students this year beyond the objectives for individual lesson plans? How about this for a starter? I will challenge each student to write down what he want to be doing with his life when he is 22 and /or make a visual page for it.
It’s easy to make a page to visually represent a goal in life, short or longterm, using pictures from newspapers or old magazines. If those aren’t available, students could draw their own pictures or be invited to do this as homework or a first week project after coming back from the winter break. The information in the article How to Set Goals with Pictures will give you some how-to’s and some inspiration you can adapt for any sort of goal-setting project.
Part of the reason our students don’t get where they’d like to be in life and have trouble breaking out of old family patterns is because they can’t visualize anything better. Even if they may secretly dream of going beyond where their parents have been in life, they may have no idea of how school might relate to getting there, or what baby steps or short-term goals they need to set to climb the ladder to where they’d like to be.
One of the most important things you need to do as a school or home educator is to inspire your students to aim high and help them begin to see what is possible for them in life. If they are proactive in setting short term goals to achieve long term goals, they have a target to aim at and the arrows to shoot at that target.
If taking some time to do this exercise with your students this week will help even one to break out of old thought patterns and a tendency to just drift toward the future, you will have given your students more than any math, social studies or science lesson could. Those who at nothing will achieve it.
What will you do to inspire your students toward a better future when this break is over?
Thank you for referring your readers to How to Set Goals with Pictures! My children, who are now adults, made goals boards (imaging boards) all through their childhood – and still make them today! New Years Eve would find us all creating our imaging boards for the new year! I want to teach the grandchildren soon, tho I know our granddaughter will want to make one as soon as she sees my new board!