Step Up Your Goal Consciousness.

Let’s be honest. A million articles and books have been written about the importance of goal setting. Everyone agrees that goal setting increases your chances of success. If we agree on that then we also agree that individual goal setting increases a student’s chances of success. I’m not just saying that. Robert Marzano (2003), What Works in Schools, found that student learning can increase anywhere from 18 to 41 percentile points when goal setting and monitoring is used to guide instruction. That is huge!

Many departments, school districts and individual schools are starting to realize that somehow, goal setting needs to be implemented. It is becoming more and more common to see school-wide improvement goals. Most school goals, class goals and individual student goals are set with the right intentions. The problem is that, in many cases, those goals are set and then slowly forgotten.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that educational goal setting isn’t easy! It takes time to analyze data and assess your students. Then you need to set up actual goals. After that you need to devise the strategy for achieving those goals. Don’t forget your measurements either. Without your measurements you will never know if you have achieved your goal or not. If you really want to do things right then you should all work cooperatively. In order to work cooperatively you need to ‘put yourself out there’ and make your goal, strategy and measurements known to your colleagues. I’m sorry to say it but that was all the easiest part of goal setting. Setting goals and sharing goals makes them ‘official’ but it does not drive behavior.

To drive behavior we need to be goal conscious. We need to constantly monitor progress. We need to revise our strategies. We need to adjust our programs. I am talking about change. We need to Get Uncomfortable! I know it is not easy. Going back to how you used to do things is easy. In order to leverage the power of goal setting and make real progress and improvements with our students, goal setting can not be ‘what’ we do. Goal setting and monitoring should be ingrained into the fabric of the school; part of the school culture and class culture.

Step up your goal consciousness!