There is a famous quote by Fitzhugh Dodson that says, "Without goals and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination." This means we should set specific and meaningful goals in both academic and personal areas and create detailed plans to achieve them. All students in Grade 6 have recently completed this stage of goal setting in our Youth Development (YD) program.

So why should we set goals and think about ways to reach them? There are three main reasons:

1. Goals motivate us to work hard consistently in certain areas. Goals encourage us to strive and put in the required effort to complete them.

2. Goals help us develop specific plans and measurable processes. By creating goals, we will know precisely when to finish tasks and judge whether the requirements have been met.

3. Goals help evaluate progress and provide opportunities to revise the system every once in a while. When we look back at what we have achieved previously, we will understand what to maintain, what to modify, and what to eliminate.

In the YD classes, the students learned to design personalized SMART goals with five focuses: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. These characteristics lead us to write accurate and reasonable goals. Our homeroom and grade teachers also set examples to guide us through the process. With the help from teachers and classmates, the students successfully created goals that set the framework for this semester. By setting goals and procedures, they will set sails for improvement in both curricular and extracurricular areas.

（Written by Darren    Supervised by Dong Liu   Pictures by Grade 6 teachers

Edited by Cong Luo, Wu Shiyu (Intern)）