Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Setting Summer Goals



At the beginning of the year I always do a goal setting activity with my students and we talk about the importance of having both short and long term goals. We write our goals on the first page of our interactive journals. And to show how important goals are, I set goals for myself right along with them. Periodically throughout the year (usually around progress report time) we review our progress and discuss our goals. We ask challenging questions of each other about why are goals are and are not working. By the end of the year most students have started to internalize that commitment is the key to having goals happen and ultimately having their dreams take shape in their lives. If you have not read the article What It Takes To Be Great by Geoff Colvin, it’s worth the read with your students. It reinforces that success comes at the high price of hard work.

Next year I am thinking about extending this activity by adding dream boards to help visualize what we desire to accomplish. Dream boards are simple to make and can be done the old fashioned way by finding pictures in magazines and pasting them on a board. Or they may be done digitally on programs like Power Point or Kidspiration and printed out for show.

DREAMBOARD


At the end of the year it’s always a good idea to remind student’s that summer is time for having fun, but that doesn’t mean that goals take a break until school starts in the Fall. I like to take a day and end our interactive journals where we began with a final goal setting activity and have students set short term goals for the summer. If they have BIG goals like being a famous soccer star, they can write what they are committed to for the summer months to keep them on track. If nothing too serious swims in their school weary brains, have them set smaller goals. I encourage them to set 5 goals and to try to capture at least three different domains Physical Activity/Health, Community Service, Home and Family Relationships, Self Improvement, Spirituality (whatever that is for your students), Career, Financial/Economic, Leisure. Of course you can feel free to adjust the domains as works best for your students.

And once again, I set goals right alongside them. Here are the goals I’m setting for the Summer 2014. I feeling ambitious this summer and set 10 goals – mostly stuff I’ve been putting off all year and can hardly wait to get started on them. The other thing about goal setting that I did not mention earlier is that successful people share their goals with others who will support them towards success. It's one thing to know your own goals, and if you give up know one knows but you. It's quite another to declare the goals or post them where everyone can see them. It lets other people know what you are up to. For those kids who are not particularly intrinsically motivated but are competitive or need approval and acceptance from their peer group, this can be the difference between success and failure. It's peer pressure used in a positive way.

To that end, I am posting mine here for you all to see. I will keep you posted on progress this Summer. I will also be showing this to my students in the Fall as part of my lesson with my new class. It will serve as a conversation starter about what we did over the summer. This adds just a little extra value to the project and let's me double dip on a lesson. Ummm... double dip....

Leisure & FamilyTake a vacation with my family and build memories. Enjoy time playing with my children and my husband. We spend little time just relaxing and we need time to bond as a family and appreciate each other.

Home & CommunityPurge my file drawers and closets of all old and unnecessary files or unused clothes. Donate those clothes to charity. It feels great to purge and make room. Plus it’s rewarding donating items to others who need them.

Self Improvement & CareerComplete 2 Master’s courses towards my degree – two down, two more to go in Fall. It's exciting to think that I will finally have that Master's degree done in December! I'm really looking forward to reaching the finish line!

Self Improvement & CareerFinish Master’s paper and submit it to my advisor for review. Finishing it in Summer will make life easier in the Fall! I really would rather not be working on that and trying to teach classrooms full of 7th graders! Yikes. That's just a frightening thought. I think that's how horror movies start.

Career - Plan 2 history units for back to school and Fall. The frazzle days of Fall sneak up quickly. It never hurts to get a jump start on the new school year and have some lessons in my back pocket read to go. History is my favorite subject to teach, so it shouldn’t feel too much like work! I will also put them up on TpT to make your lives easier, too. Ooo.. and now that I'm thinking about next year, I will make note to do my own dream board as part of my prep for next year. I suppose I'm double dipping again.

Self Improvement & Leisure & SpiritualREAD! READ! READ! Read at least 2 books on my wish list. Nothing refreshes my soul more than giving myself time to read for pleasure. It’s such a healing and rewarding activity for the mind, the body, and the soul. Just thinking about it gives me goose bumps.

Family Relationships – Help my youngest earn some of his Cub Scout badges. We picked out a half dozen badges we will work on this summer from his Webelo's book. He will love doing them and it get's us off the couch and outside. I think this also qualifies as leisure because I will enjoy it as much as he does.

Family Relationships – Go on a date with my husband twice a month. Yes, I know it sounds crazy. But when you are a teacher and working on a Master’s degree, and have a family, hubby gets put on the back burner. Time together as a couple is as rare as rocking horse poop. So setting a goal to spend time together is an essential, plus he’s so much fun, how could I not want to spend time with him! Honestly, this is more of an excuse than a goal. If you have any tips on where to secure a baby-sitter, let me know.

Business – I have several partially completed units in development that I will polish off and publish on TpT. I will work on completing them and making them ready for sale before the end of the Summer. On top of that, I have literally dozens of other ideas brewing that could use some attention. But first things first, as I tell my children, finish what’s on your plate before you add something new.

Physical HealthWalk with the kids and/or Yoga daily! This is always the hardest one for me because I’m rather a couch potato. This is not necessarily the standard I want to set for my children. It’s high time I modeled the importance of taking care of our bodies by moving for at least 30 minutes a day. Perhaps by Fall, I will feel up to increasing that to 60 minutes!!

And as a final thought, as I was setting these goals I remembered another goal that has been on my plate for ages, but never acted upon. While I don’t really feel up to doing it this Summer, I will certainly put it on the top of my list in the Fall when I set goals with the class. What’s that goal, you ask? Well, it’s really about time that I write a 10 day set of Emergency Sub Plans and have them ready to go! And that will be my starting point with my kids next year!!

I look forward to hearing your goals for the summer and how you use goal setting with your students.