The Keys to Hitting a Target

Dear colleague,

For the past few summers in Michigan, my family and I have spent one week at a family camp, and one of our favorite camp activities is heading to the riflery and archery ranges and working on our marksmanship. Being town dwellers like we are, shooting 22s or bows and arrows isn't something we often get to do. And with my youngest being eight at the time of this writing, it's just a great activity where we can compete with one another and, even more fun, with ourselves.

I like to share this with my students when we talk about goal-setting. I ask my students:

• Which do you think is easier: shooting at a target on a clear day or shooting at a target in thick fog?

Definitely a clear day.

In the same way, I tell them it's much easier to aim at a goal that is clear versus a goal that is obscured by the fog of vagueness.

• Improving my grades is a pretty vague goal. Getting all six of my classes up to a D- or better is a much clearer one.
• Staying focused is a vague goal. Keeping track of all my assignments for all of my classes in one place is a much clearer one.
• Doing better in science is a vague goal. Making a page in my notebook to write down everything that confuses me during a science lesson and asking a teacher or friend for help with these confusions, one at at time — that's a much clearer one.

When success is vague in our classrooms or in our students' minds — and I'd argue in many classes, both of those things are often commonplace — motivation is bound to deteriorate.

It is hard to care about a vague goal — especially over the long term. Vague goals lead to spotty, mood-dependent effort and frustration in the end.

Specific goals, on the other hand, enable us to do what an effective marksman must do to improve their target sheets:

• Focus on the specific actions a shooter or archer must take to improve their accuracy (e.g., breathing, trigger pull, bow draw, follow-through)
• Observe the results of these small actions and continue to modify toward improvement

So too with school goals.

The two practical things you can take away from this article are straightforward:

• Make sure you have a very clear (and regularly articulated) Everest Statement — this is what our class is all about.
• Periodically guide your students through goal-setting exercises (such as WOOP).

It is amazing how these simple moves enrich my practice (and that of my students) whenever I attend to them.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR