Cultivating Students’ Sense of Purpose

For many children, the shift in mindset from summer break to school can be a tough transition. It’s as if children are flipping on a switch in their brains from their relaxed summer selves to a focused and motivated self. This new self will face responsibilities, expectations, and deadlines for assignments, projects, and upcoming assessments. Let’s face it, this can all be overwhelming. However, for teachers, finding ways to build a purpose-driven classroom offers students opportunities to envision their future selves.

Encouraging students to develop their future selves plays a pivotal role in school and life. When students jump from one grade level to the next, they often do not consider the importance of personal growth and self-expectations; instead, the focus is more on what the teacher and school curriculum require.

One way to embrace a new school year is to come in with purpose and commitment toward developing your future self. Your future self is best when crafted and thought about at the beginning of the school year. Whether it be the first couple of days of school or throughout the year, engaging your students in being purpose-driven offers a valuable skill.

7 Tools for Developing Purpose-Driven Students

1. Self-intention letters. An intention is a commitment to oneself. Writing a letter to yourself where you articulate your intentions—goals, motivations, plans for the future school year, etc.—can elicit introspection and forward thinking.

The purpose of the letter is to set your intentions for the year, be mindful of those intentions, try to accomplish the goals and intentions you set, and revisit and read your letter at the end of the school year. Rereading your letter at the end of the school year offers a chance for reflection, a feeling of accomplishment, and a focus on setting yourself up for success in upcoming years.

2. Scorecards. Create a scorecard with three to five actions, habits, or skills you will incorporate into your future self. Each day, you will check off whether you completed the action or not. For instance, you might create four actions to incorporate into your school day.

These actions could include writing down one thing learned in class each day in a notebook, taking one minute each day to mentally and physically get yourself ready for learning, organizing your school bag, and reading one piece of news each day from a specific website. When the day is done, check off the boxes on the scorecard. At the end of the week, you can see how much, or how little, you completed your actions.

3. Daily routines. No one routine fits everyone’s mold. Routines are meant to be tailored to each individual. Setting a daily routine can support students in being more productive, focused, and motivated. A routine can be incorporated in and outside of the classroom.

It might include what students do each morning before leaving for school, important checkpoints throughout the day, and actions taken at night before going to bed. Routines can be altered and modified over time as circumstances change. A way to entice students to create a routine might be to have them design a poster and hang it in a place where they can see it each day.

4. Habits awareness checklists. Developing habits is essential in building progress in life and learning. A habit differs from a routine in that it involves a cue that triggers a certain behavior or action. For example, before you go to bed (cue), your brain triggers the habitual act of having to brush your teeth. Over time, this behavior becomes automatic and often is repeated subconsciously. A routine, however, is a series of planned intentional actions. As students fast-forward their thinking into the next school year, offer the opportunity to think about what habits they would like to improve or consider being more aware of in school.

Begin by asking your students to choose four habits from the Habits of Mind list to consider putting in place for the school year. Once they choose four habits from the list, students should write a summary about how, when, where, and why they will incorporate each habit into their school day. Once a week, students can revisit their selected habits of mind and journal about them.

5. Operator’s manuals. An operator’s manual is a way for students to provide information about how they operate—both effectively and ineffectively—within the learning environment. It’s an opportunity for students to not only reflect but provide a mini-biography about themselves as learners to their teachers. You can create specific categories, or students can create their own. A few categories might be limitations, strengths, weaknesses, stressors, recovery techniques, energizers, and so on.

Under each category, students identify and take notes of the features they present in relation to their learning and abilities. Moreover, this manual serves as an opportunity for students to reflect and improve in these areas. As time goes on, students have the opportunity to reengage with their manual by updating, reflecting on, and adding new realizations about themselves and their abilities.

6. Awareness of personal peak, trough, and recovery times. Much research has been done on the importance of when we are most and least productive during the day. Daniel Pink, a best-selling author and renowned researcher on motivation, discusses the importance of time in his book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

He identifies three stages of the day that most people go through: peak, trough, and recovery. Offer students an opportunity to identify and reflect throughout the day about when they reach their peak, trough, and recovery. Next, have students design a chart displaying their day around their three stages to find when they are most motivated and productive.

7. Elevator pitches. An elevator pitch—most common in the business world—is a short, memorable description of what you do or sell. It should be no longer than 30 seconds and easily digestible for the listener. However, this technique can also be an effective approach for students to present themselves to their teacher. Students’ goal in setting up their future elevator pitch is to be able to introduce themselves in a positive light. The pitch must contain two important features: clear and precise language that provides a sense of what the teacher can expect, and how the student will follow through to maintain this behavior in the new school year.