In last week’s youth development class, seventh graders learned how to set their own "smart" goals, as well as how to manage and ultimately achieve them. In smart goals, each letter represents a key requirement to achieving a goal. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.  

Students learned how to manage their goals and eventually achieve them during class. The lecture began with a group activity. The teachers assigned the student body to choose ten objects to bring to a hypothetical camping trip, with different members of the group responsible for bringing different things. In the activity, several problems were presented, for instance, when a bear came or two people lost their luggage and everything they prepared. The relevance of this activity was later explained as a relating to how students can prepare their smart goals and even in the face of adversity, how to overcome and be successful with their goals. The exercise had given the student body one definite goal of survival and gave them their conditions and means to achieve it. As every group would gather their ten objects and calculate their usage and distribution, in smart goals, students learned to use the same methods, preparing for, and managing their learning goals to eventually achieve them.

Later in class, each of these aspects were explored separately. Directing students to a more organized future, SMART goals taught students to set reasonable deadlines and expectations for themselves, as well as track their own development and self-improvement. It’s focused on having students set more realistic and achievable goals that hopefully will lead to self-awareness and improved grades in study or more creation and development in personal life. Extending from goal setting, SMART goals also practice and challenge a variety of other skills, like time management in the last criteria of time. Setting goals provides an opportunity to challenge oneself and develop new abilities and last week’s YD class was focused over how to correctly set those goals and achieve them.

Written by Niuniu 7-12

Supervised by Fergal Lochhead  

Pictures by Grade 7 teachers

Edited by Serene Yang, Niall Keenan