Personal Fitness Goals

This is a place where I am trying to articulate a method for taking some charge for my personal fitness goals. The goal is not to share mine with "the world," not that anyone would really care -- besides, I have a long way to go :) -- but to brainstorm for a method that I can take more of an ongoing, active responsibility for doing this. I was brainstorming with a friend who is an athletic director about how to apply what's new on the academic education front to physical education, with the idea of helping him achieve his goal of boosting his school's athletic standings (already pretty good). So I'm exploring what it would be like for students (on a very "limited access" website, which a Google Site allows, free with a Google Account) to keep a chart or spreadsheet of their progress toward their goals, and to have it visible to their coach or gym teacher.

If a method like this were adopted, coaches and gym teachers could review a student's personal fitness goals and their progress toward them. The idea is for students, with some adult oversight, to design their own program and give themselves points in a way that both challenges and rewards them. Coaches or gym teachers would periodically review them and give students credit, not so much for getting to the goals, but for building an active, reflective engagement with them and for updating their spreadsheet. Students would be encouraged, especially at first, to be simply be observant of their exercise habits or patterns, to be kind to themselves, and look for measured or incremental growth. (The spreadsheet with an accompanying chart below was created as a Google Document, also free with a Google Account, and it was "inserted" into this webpage. Students would update their spreadsheet and since it is already inserted into their webpage, it would appear whenever the page is brought up.)

Educational philosophy these days encourages review of data (the "data culture"), and there's nothing better when students take charge of their data, along with guidance from parents, coaches, and teachers. -- John Chamberlain jchambs17@gmail.com