Well, to begin with, I'm usually pretty good with setting goals for myself and achieving them. As long as I have them written somewhere that I will see them often, I can stay on course. One thing I do struggle with as far as setting goals is how much to challenge myself. How much is too much? At what point do I turn my switch off and let things go? I know at the beginning of every semester, I get overwhelmed with everything I have to do throughout the entire semester that my brain shuts down and I cannot get anything done until I've written down all assignments and due dates. This helps me to see things spaced out and not all crammed together, so I know that I will not be working on all these papers and assignments at the same time.
As far as setting goals for a classroom of students, I have had virtually no experience with this at all. My CT made a good point today that I have been thinking about since our meeting. He said that grades do not matter to him. What matters in his classroom is the learning. If his students are not getting their work done or not getting it done well, he assumes there is a problem with the way he has presented the assignments to these particular students. He will go back and revise or assign different projects for the students who struggle with the initial assignment. This would be a lot of extra work for the teacher, but isn't it a good thing that we have teachers like him who are so willing to help students excel? At the same time, where is the line drawn on that issue? Wouldn't a lot of kids take advantage of that and claim they don't understand in order to get a new assignment? I would think, however, that students would see his willingness to help them and that, in turn, would make them more willing to work for him.
The final thing about setting goals, especially in a classroom, is the idea of planning so much that some information gets left out. There would be a frustration there that would discourage a lot of people. I know it would discourage me if I didn't get to my whole plan, after I had spent so much time developing it. Once you are in the middle of a lesson, and you realize that you don't have enough time to cover everything, is it important that you know beforehand what can be left out? If you don't know what can be left out before you begin teaching, how do you take care of it in the middle of class? I would think still that it is better to overplan than underplan... Right?
