Goals and Aspirations

Last week the school I teach at gave out the first school-wide essay of the year: "What are your goals and aspirations for the upcoming year?" Now we all know how annoying school essays can be and I know that I, personally, dread grading them but the question being asked is not that bad.

I'm sure I'll read countless papers on how some kid is planning on getting good grades or improving his jump-shot. There'll be a few on becoming a better person or making more friends. Sounds tedious, I know, yet there is something uplifting about reading all these teens' papers. I'm not arguing that my students are innocent or naive, that their age makes them more pure or less cynical, I'm just saying that seeing those words and ideas down on paper has an effect. Sometimes a magical one.

I have bills to pay and jobs to do, children to raise and people to pacify. Life is... Well not necessarily HARD, but complicated. In all the rushing around and worry we sometimes lose sight of the very goals we are doing all that struggling to reach. Wouldn't it be nice if, like my students, we had a piece of paper we wrote that reminds us why we're doing all this? At the end of the school year I often think back to the start of this term and wonder if I reached any of these kids, if I taught them anything?
Wouldn't it be nice if I could pull out a piece of paper to remind me what it was exactly I wanted to impart?

It's not just teachers and parents, educators and role models who have this problem. So many of us have so much we want to do, even if it's just improve our jump-shot.

So, what are YOUR goals and aspirations for the upcoming year?

You can follow Menachem Luchins on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/NukeLuchins