New year, new projects

Last December I mentioned in my last post about XXI century skills for education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, learning to live together. (Delors, 1996), This year, Clau and I decided to start with a new project about feelings and emotions, about being comfortable together, about learning to be in the group. The project was called "My shoes, your shoes" and studens enjoyed it a lot! They shared different experiences and how they felt about them, as well as the way the people helped them overcome difficult situations. Students praised each other and put themselves into their partners shoes. Together we laughed, we cried, but, most importantly, we learnt that we need to look around and beyond ourselves.

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Goal-Setting

My first entry will be devoted to the topic of objectives. Human beings constantly set objectives for themselves in an attempt to improve their living conditions. Once I heard someone say that human beings live their lives setting objective after objective, without goals life worths nothing. He was neither a philosopher nor an erudite; he was just a Cuban taxi driver. At that moment I jot down his ideas since I wanted to remember them for the rest of my life. I´ve found myself quoting him again and again, especially now that school year has started! We, teachers, tend to set our goals for the year, for the term, for the project, for the day, even for ourselves in relation to the group we have. Without them our teaching leads us nowhere or somewhere else we might not plan to go. And if we don´t share them with our students it might produce the same results. To be sincere, I didn´t use to share them with kids and now I see how mistaken I was! Knowing what we want helps us get it! It´s not customary to get on a train or bus without knowing where we want to go, we don´t take a plane without having decided on the place to go and we won´t reach our destination just by accident. We generally make decisions beforehand on the route we want to follow and the resources we need to get. The same happens at school! This first week has been a proof that setting goals out loud for students to know where we are going increases performance. Especially if the word GOAL is used with the kids instead of "learning intentions"! Some of the kids called themselves Messi since they felt they scored a goal at the end of the class!