Lessons From the Pavement

I have walked 500 miles, and I have walked 500 more.  Last spring, I used this goofy song from The Proclaimers as inspiration for my exercise goal.  I set the goal to walk 500 mile during the summer and 500 more during the school year.  As of today, I have officially reached this goal.  This is not a post for bragging about the thousand miles I walked in the past 10 months (even though I am pretty proud of it).  Much like pastors pull from their family life for sermon illustrations, I find myself seeing everything in my life as an application to education.  My year of walking is one of those things.  Here are some things I learned and their applications to education.

1.  Setting goals is only good if the goal is both challenging and doable.
People set goals for motivation.  This doesn't work, however, if the goal is too small to care about.  If I had set out to walk 100 miles during the summer, that would only have required a mile or two per day.  There would have been no fun in reaching that goal because it is too easy to do.  It is also not motivational to set unrealistic goals.  If I had decided to walk a thousand miles during the summer, I would have sabotaged myself.  By knowing it was not possible, I would have an instant reason to do nothing.  If I can't reach the goal, why do anything?

Application to education:  Projects should only be assigned if they are challenging.  Since there is no intrinsic motivation if something is too easy, don't give easy projects.  However, remember that your students are students.  You may think that setting an impossible goal will mean that at least you will get their best, but you won't.

2.  You must have a schedule.
You had to know this one was coming.  A challenging goal cannot be achieved overnight.  To get the 500 miles I wanted during the summer, I had to average about 9 miles per day.  If there was bad weather one day or my feet hurt, causing a shorter walk, that meant I had to make it up another day.  Knowing that meant I couldn't just decide not to walk for several days in a row.

Application to education:  If a student who can pull an all-nighter to complete your project in a way you can't tell, it is not a good project.  An appropriately challenging project requires planning.  Depending on the age and experience level of your students, you might want to set goals for them or allow them to set their own.  If this is a change for your students, don't assume they can do it alone.  This is a skill to be taught; it's not innate.  Give them a calendar with some landmarks, and allow them to figure out what is doable by that time.  If they don't accomplish what they want by that date, have them create a plan for how they will catch up.

3.  Take advantage of opportunities, so you can push through the obstacles.

This is what it looks like when you
walk a hole through your shoe.

If you know me, you might know that I have a lot of goals.  This walking thing was just the latest in a string.  In order to make good use of my summer, I usually set several - for school, exercise, reading, and a home project.  Some are fairly short term (a couple of days to get a closet organized or patch the hole in the ceiling) while others are very long term (5 years for my blood donation goal).  The ones that last more than a few days will be frustrated by obstacles.  Walking a thousand miles means sometimes dealing with weather, sore feet, tired legs, back pain, and destruction of shoes.  Almost every day, at the half mile mark, my legs would tell me that there was no shame in turning back.  If I kept going, my legs would soon shut up.  I walked as many as 15 miles one day, but I had to ignore my legs at the half mile mark in order to make that happen.  Taking advantage of each opportunity meant that one rainy day didn't mean failure.

Application to education:  Any goal worth setting means setbacks.  A student can have the best schedule in the world, but if a group member gets sick or there is a sudden family emergency or the team they are on suddenly makes the state championships, adjustments will have to be made.  This is fine as long as they have been ignoring their tendency toward apathy at other times.  If they accomplish work every week, their schedule can absorb the unexpected.  Our school yearbook is an example of this.  We have three deadlines.  One is always right before exams, and one is always near the school play.  These are only problems if I or my staff have not been making progress up to those days.

4.  Don't give yourself prizes.
This goes against everything you have read before.  People often give the advice that you should treat yourself to a spa day or a new outfit when reaching a goal.  The problem with that, at least for me, is that I will find a way to justify getting the prize anyway, even if I haven't reached the goal.  Letting the accomplishment be its own reward is the only thing that works for me.

Application to education:  We have to stop rewarding every little thing students do.  I used to be part of the problem.  I had a prize box (of worthless stuff I bought from Dollar Tree).  I gave this stuff to students for winning review games or answering questions correctly.  I thought I was providing motivation for participation, but I came to realize that I was feeding the very beast I then complained about in the teacher's lounge.  Entitlement.  I stopped buying things for the box, and I will not go back.  At the beginning of the year, when we play our first review game, kids always ask what they will win.  My answer now is "the joy of winning."  Don't get me wrong; I am not saying that it is wrong to give a kid a sticker if they make a grade above their normal performance.  What I am saying is that they won't work for the sticker.  In Drive, a great book about motivation by Daniel Pink, the research is laid out that IF prizes are to be given, they should not be "If . . . then" prizes that are announced ahead of time.  Rather, he advises "Now that" prizes that come as a surprise after the project is finished.

5.  Share - but share sparingly.

I shared this picture at the 500 mile mark, not every day.

Sharing your goals and accomplishments with others is great, unless you do it too much.  We all have that Facebook friend that tells everything they do.  They are always having the most amazing experience or having the best cup of coffee of their life or reading the best book they have ever read.  Their kids are always doing the most clever thing any child has ever done.  If you don't have one of those friends, consider whether or not you are that friend.  I do share my goals because I find it holds me accountable to them.  When I decided to write a science text, I e-mailed my administration and IT people.  Doing so meant that I would actually do it because the goal wouldn't just be in my own mind.  What I did NOT do was e-mail them after I finished each chapter.  When I set the walking goal, I posted it on social media, but I didn't share every mile or every day. I shared at the half way point, and I am sharing it now.  Sharing it at a milestone means your friends will celebrate it with you.  Sharing it all the time means your friends will be sick of hearing about it.

Application to education:  Teachers always want to share what their students are doing.  We share with other teachers, in faculty meetings, in parent e-mails, an on social media.  I share about my students projects on this blog.  All that is great, but think it through before you share.  If you are sharing about the same thing too often, you will annoy everyone.  Share the big stuff, but remember that not every word your kids write or say is gold.