Goal: What's Your Personal Theme Song?

Part of the Goals 2010 Challenge Series, Goal 8 and part of the Cool Sites Series

Congratulations!

You just completed a week of goals. Can you believe how much you’ve accomplished in the New Year so far?! For the next goal, I want us to keep ourselves motivated for the week ahead. In the past, the best way I kept motivated was by feeling confident in myself. Personally, I think January is one of the toughest months. During this time we reflect on everything we did not accomplish the previous year, then we make goals and by the end of the month we might beat ourselves up for not making any progress towards these goals. I like to plan for this inevitable time that I know I will feel depressed. Many of us may be our own worse critics. When I was in my 20s, I learned a trick from watching one of my favorite television series, Ally McBeal. In the show, Ally convinces her bestfriend John, who often stutters and lacks confidence, to get a personal theme song to sing to his reflection in the mirror. At first, John thinks it’s a terrible idea. Then he chooses the Barry White song, You’re The First, The Last, My Everything. In this video clip he’s singing the song and his co-workers join him.

Accomplishing This Goal

Over the years, I have had several theme songs for different occasions. I had one song to motivate me to exercise, another to start the day, and those to deal with disappointment. Usually, I would sing these on the way to work in my car, hum them, or sing them to myself in my head. I had my theme song saved as my ring tone. Over the years, I stopped doing this. However, this year my long-term goal is to maintain this practice.
To accomplish today’s task, think about what songs make you feel confident in various areas of your life. You can create lists in your mp3 player, Ipod, or Iphone. A friend, @Annapires, introduced me to Blip.fm, a music site where you can create music lists and post these selections on Twitter, Facebook, or Live Journal. This is a great site to post your personal theme songs and share them with your friends.

Your Students

This task can also be implemented as an activity with your students. Ask your students what personal theme song they would choose and why. They can create their own music videos using Animoto, Windows Movie Maker, Glogster, or other tools. Read this post and this post for more ideas of web 2.0 tools your students can use for this activity. Your students can also take this quiz which will tell them their personal theme song after they answer the questions. They can research the song lyrics and decide if they agree/disagree and why. The students can also make their own quizzes with more modern choices for their peers to take.

More Resources

Student music videos at the Zarco English Blog
Project Peace, the student collaborative video project
A student’s multimedia essay, My Personal Theme Song
Personal Theme Song and Why

If you are new to the 30 day Goal challenge then you may want to read this post with more details!
Challenge:
Think about your personal theme song or have your students determine their personal theme songs as a project!