The vision board technique is a creative, useful, and visual tool that helps individuals, including secondary school students, clarify and manifest their goals and aspirations. It involves creating a collage or display board that represents their dreams, ambitions, and desired outcomes in various areas of life, such as education, career, relationships, personal growth, and hobbies.
The vision board technique is also known as dream board, goal board and visual goal setting.
What is this technique/tool about
A Vision Board is a visual and attractive representation and manifestation of a person's desired short term, medium term, or long future in life, which works to attract what he/she wants. It is a very common activity in online environments such as Pinterest or TikTok, platforms where generations share their visions of what they want to achieve or accomplish in their lives through a collage created from inspirational images that represent what they want for their lives. In addition, sharing individual Vision Boards with other like-minded people online allows them to develop a stronger commitment to their vision and a stronger sense of community on social media.
The aim of this exercise is to adapt the creation of tailored Vision Boards to work with people to explore what your client(s)' desired outcomes are and then reflect on the means to achieve their vision.
For which purposes is it used (why in your secondary school teaching)
Some of the potential benefits of this exercise under are:
Limitations
Vision Boards require active participation and can be difficult to do consistently. It may also be challenging to maintain focus when there are distractions or if the team is not engaging.
Preparation, before the session:
As a professional, you should clearly explain what the purposes of the exercise are, especially in terms of representing those goals that the team wants to achieve on a professional or community level. You both should jointly agree on the time frame to which this particular vision board refers (this may be short, medium or long term, in which case the dreams expressed will vary depending on their feasibility timewise).
During the session:
Once the team has understood the purpose of creating their own vision board, provide them with the necessary tools and materials to create the actual collage. Namely, old magazines with different types of images and headlines that might be of interest to them, newspapers, brochures, online image repositories and printers, cardboard, scissors, glue...
The vision board can be created in physical format (using a piece of paper or cardboard) or in digital format (there are numerous digital tools that can be useful to complete the task, have a look at the “Online Version” section below), depending on the resources available. In either case, you should ensure that once the task is completed, the young person will have recurrent access to their vision board for it to be a reminder of their goals and objectives, and a guide for their actions towards making a positive change.
Follow-up after the session:
When the team has had time to reflect on their goals and desired future in the short, medium, or long term, and has created the vision board, ask them to please present it to you. In this way you can start a conversation about hopes and desires that will allow you to learn more about their motivations and aspirations and guide their reflection process with a focus on highlighting already existing skills and strengths, as well as the resources already available to achieve the positive change they hope for in their live and role in the community.
You can reinforce their sense of agency by focusing on the routes they can take to achieve the desires outlined in their vision board.
Some materials you might need:
Links:
Videos:
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