Goals Every Teacher Should Set

People usually tend to make goals in January at the beginning of the year. But for teachers, the new year begins in the fall, at the start of a new school year. This is when teachers write their goals.

Goals are a great way to focus attention on what is considered important, instead of wasting energy on less necessary tasks. For a New Year’s Resolution, that may mean choosing a new diet and lifestyle plan in order to lose weight, or maybe fixing up that resume to look for a new job.

When you build a New Year’s resolution, it’s important to not try to take on the world all at once. You may want a new job, a six pack of abs, and to be able to say you left nothing undone this next year. But there’s something called opportunity cost, and that means that when you endeavor to complete one task, other tasks are naturally left undone.

The point is, choosing only a few goals at a time narrows your focus and maximizes your chances of success.

What goals are essential to teachers this year?

Because it is important to narrow our focus, I am only going to focus on these three goals this year:

Decide how to work as efficiently as possible
Plan to meet with each student often in small groups or individually
Find ways to brighten the workplace for yourself by brightening it for others

I know that making these three goals will take a lot of consideration, but will make for a happier, more fulfilling year. Let’s dive right into our discussion of each and why these are so critical.

Goal 1: Deciding how to work as efficiently as possible

You are not a teaching machine. You need rest, you need breaks. You can have a life outside of teaching, pursuing hobbies and having fun with friends and family.

So, you need to set the goal! Here are some tasks that often leave you working outside of hours:

grading
lesson planning
documentation
contacting parents

It is up to you to decide how to accomplish these tasks within the school day. If it means you have to spend some time outside of school hours to build up a system at first, that’s fine. But the goal is to ultimately end up using only contract hours for work.

My strategy: Plan in batches. Get the big bulk of it done up front and make small changes as you go.

If you need more ideas, make sure to check out Teachers Pay Teachers for resources! Chances are, if you need it, someone else has thought of it before too! You can save yourself a lot of time by using resources created by others. While you’re there, make sure you take a look at my store, too!

Goal 2: Planning to meet with each student often

Meeting with students in small groups and individually is one of the best ways to make sure they are actually keeping up with the learning.

The students that succeed the most in class are usually the ones always raising their hands during whole group discussions. They receive frequent feedback because they are consistently having a one-on-one discussion with the teacher through their comments and answers.

This opportunity is missed by students who take the easy “I won’t answer unless I have to” route. These students get less feedback because they give less answers. They interact with the teacher a considerably large amount less, and therefore, they do not learn as much because they weren’t pushed to.

Cold calling can be a good way to increase the interaction between you and the students, but if you have a large class, it can be hard to make sure that each student is learning every concept you need them to.

By contrast, meeting with each student individually or in small groups can guarantee structured time that students can expect to engage with you about the learning concepts. This can be crucial to their individual accountability and learning.

Again, this can take a lot of time and preparation to set up correctly, so the goal here is to ultimately build to the point that you are meeting with them. It is OK if it takes time. Just keep making steady progress towards this goal. Evaluate your efforts often, and make changes when you feel it will help.

Goal 3: Finding ways to brighten the workplace by brightening it for others

Has someone at work every brightened your day with a kind word, a gift, or just by helping you out with something?

This goal is not just about strengthening yourself. In order to strengthen yourself, you need others. Teachers cannot stand alone. This profession is too taxing. We should stand together.

When you are at work, take a look around at the other teachers. Talk to them. Ask them for ideas, and see if there’s any indication of a need somewhere in their conversations.

You can also find out your coworkers’ favorite flavors of something and leave it on their desks on a day you expect to be challenging.

Any way you do it, be genuine, and you’re sure to brighten your workplace, as well as your teacher experience!