Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
One of my favourite podcasts is Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam. In a 2016 episode on goal setting, he interviewed researcher Gabriele Oettingen, who shared that the power of positive thinking, vision boards, and wishing for things actually makes a person's goals less likely to be realized. That was interesting enough in itself, but then she outlined the WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) method of goal setting, which has proven to be much more effective. I immediately filed it away in the back of my head as something to try with students someday. Well, that day has come and gone and I'll tell you all about it. I started by leading my class of Grade eights through the recommended goal setting exercises found at characterlab.org. We read through the three student thought bubbles together and they predicted which one was most likely to achieve their goal. Then, we watched this video while the students answered number 3. After the completion of the video, we discussed why most students would change their prediction of student A being most likely to achieve their goal to student B, based on what they saw in the video. Student B saw a potential obstacle and had a plan for it. Then, I demonstrated on the whiteboard how a person could use this worksheet to make their own WOOP plan: I told the class that I use a similar common tactic for getting myself to go to the gym when I really don't feel like working out. I tell myself that I just have to get there and work out for 5-10 minutes, and usually, after 5 minutes have passed, I feel like completing the workout and end up staying for an hour. After this demonstration, I had them fill out their own WOOP worksheet, instructing them to write down a SMART academic wish for themselves, SMART being an acronym for: The WOOP playbook states: "Rather than pursuing goals that feel imposed by others, WOOP taps into a student’s intrinsic interests." However, in order to make the activity relevant to the curriculum, I needed to ask my students to focus their goals on academics, knowing that, unfortunately, some of them don't really care about school at this point in their lives.
I hope I made it clear to my students that this system of goal setting can be used for any aspect of their lives and that they bring WOOP with them outside the classroom. According to the WOOP playbook, "Teaching students how to achieve important wishes is the difference between a lifetime of 'I wanted to' and a lifetime of 'I did.'" Maybe that's a little grandiose but, who knows? Maybe I'm planting trees under whose shade I will never sit.
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David Wiebe
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