“Results show up. They’re easy to see, easy to measure and they persist.”
I know I want my students to learn and sometimes they don’t learn as fast as others do but I have to find a way to measure their progress.
I have to help them set goals that are measurable in order to show progress. Notice that I said that I have to help them set goals. I don’t believe it helps if I set the goals for them because then they have nothing vested in meeting these goals. I need to help them see what the end goal is and then work with them in setting the smaller goals in order to reach the end.
I have mentioned before that without having an end goal is just like getting in a car and driving aimlessly. If you have a destination in mind, you can create a tentative route that you want to follow to get there. Like any journey, you might find roadblocks, roads closed, or detours that take you to new adventures. It might take longer than you hoped but eventually, you can get there, even if you have to have help getting there.
If I want to knit a sweater, I can learn to knit the different stitches to produce a finished sweater. If I learned to knit specific stitches but never put them together to make a sweater, how do I know that I can knit a sweater? How do I know that I can reach my goal?
Once I reach my goal and have a finished product, I can make new goals with new expectations and results. My finished product may not be perfect, or it may not fit so I will have to come up with a new goal. My new goal might be to knit a sweater that fits me. This involves measurement and other technical details in order to achieve my goal. But I would need to have a new result in order to see if I accomplished my goal.
Without being able to show results, how do I know that I achieved what I wanted? Just learning skills without knowing how to apply them to a finished product, is just spinning my wheels.
An effort is important and applauded but results are needed. Results matter.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Without being able to show results, how do I know that I achieved what I wanted? Just learning skills without knowing how to apply them to a finished product, is just spinning my wheels.
An effort is important and applauded but results are needed. Results matter.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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