That's what New Year's Resolutions are all about right? Setting a goal weight. Keeping a cleaner house. Packing healthier lunches. Exercising everyday.
I looked up New year's Resolutions on Pinterest and found pins like "50 Resolutions You Can Actually Keep" and "The Ultimate Resolutions List" and "70 Resolutions to Set in 2019". Gah.
It's been about 5 years since I resolved to stop setting New Year's Resolutions. I'm all for goal setting. I just don't jive with throwing out 85 of them on one earmarked day and theoretically maintaining them for the next 364 days.
Right now I am battling for a better understanding of goal setting in our school. Currently the word "goal" is synonymous with "score" which is stirred in with "growth" and has an "achievement" chaser. This vicious cocktail leave behind a nastier hangover than any NYE party mixer could.
After completing the midyear county-wide, computer-based, smart program growth assessment, students' scores are doled out, sometimes charted or graphed, and compared against the "goal score" that was set following this assessment at the beginning of the year. Scores and, thus the students themselves, will meet, exceed, or fall short of the set goal. Celebrations, condolences, or reprimands are delivered, and the process starts over again with new goal score for the end of the year.
The "goal" is a numerical score determined by a formula for (universally) expected growth that will determine a student's perceived achievement.
I've been battling this practice in my school for a few years. Ultimately, here's what it comes down to for me: Students -children, learners- should not bear the burden of a number equivalent to their abilities as a reader, writer, or any other subject. If we must have scores (and must we, really?), that score is but a factor contributing to my, the teacher's, knowledge of what a student understands or needs to learn. I take it, consult what it tells me against what I know of this student as a learner, and proceed to use it as I see fit to inform the what, how, when, and why of that student's learning.
Over the next few posts, I will go into more detail about this process. I'll share my resources and methods for using test results to inform my teaching, because I believe it can. This can be done without pressuring, bribing, threatening, or indeed discussing numerical scores with students at all. Results can guide decisions I'll make for whole class, small group, and individual instruction. I will share what I've tried, what I've avoided, and what I've learned from both.
I also want to come back to this idea of goal setting with students. If this score-based goal setting is irresponsible and detrimental to students' development as learners, as I think it is, how then may goal setting be done to genuinely support students' growth as learners? Specifically how can metacognition and growth mindset strategies help students better understand themselves as learners, therefore setting goals that specifically support the process, not the result?
Based on conversations I have had with fellow teachers from other schools and districts, this specific practice is not universal, but the addiction to scores does seem to be. What has been your experience? How does your school or district respond to scores? I can somewhat safely assume that the testing portion is widespread. Most places have adopted a test to predict the result of the test. The latter being the state mandated high-stakes test. What has been your experience with goal-setting for students? How has it been modeled, encouraged, or required in your school or district?
Most importantly, what goal-oriented work have you done in your classroom? How have you seen this affect your students and their learning? How have you felt about it afterwards? In what ways did it challenge or support your ideals as a teacher? This issue carries a lot of weight for me, as it has been the hill I've repeatedly vowed to die on when it comes to my classroom (granted I've got many hills).
As I look into the face of a new year, dense with the same issues, I resolve to stop shouting into the wind about how poisonous I think this practice is. I resolve instead to research, employ, and share what we can be doing to responsibly, respectfully, and effectively set learning goals for and with students.
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