Goal Setting for the New Year: World Language Teacher Edition!
Although Back to School season is a new beginning for us as teachers, it is probably the busiest and most hectic time of the year…so, it’s a less-than-ideal time for us to set intentional goals for ourselves and our students. As January approaches, however, and people begin to reflect on the previous year, set intentions, and design resolutions to help them feel happier and healthier in the new year, it’s the perfect time for us, too, as World Language teachers to begin thinking about the types of practical and realistic objectives we’d like to set for ourselves in the new year.
I don’t know about you, but in my teaching context, I don’t ever really feel like I am asked or challenged to improve my craft or refine my teaching practices. The district might publish a few goals related to SEL (we have been talking about restorative practices for… five years now? Maybe six… I’ve lost count…) or some other fancy buzzword that has taken off in the online education space, but I don’t ever feel like I’m prompted to set goals to improve my own teaching.
A few years ago, I started feeling pretty stagnant with where I was in my teaching career: I had already mastered the fundamentals of World Language pedagogy, my students were consistently performing well, I had a comprehensive repository of engaging resources to use with my students, and I just thought: “Is this it…?” Do I just continue doing the same thing, year in and year out? Sure, the students change every year, but going through the motions with a sort of metaphorical professional blindfold on left me feeling unsatisfied and aimless.
I decided that I would spend some time in December taking a good, hard look at how the school year had been unfolding thus far and determine just a few key areas in my teaching that I wanted to improve upon, along with actionable steps to reach my goals. In this blog post, I’m going to share my process with you so that you, too, can start thinking about how you would like the next year to unfold in your World Language classroom.
Start small, and make your World Language Teaching Goal realistic.
I recently heard a startling statistic that less than 10% of people ever accomplish their New Year’s Resolutions. What an exercise in futility, no? I mean, most of us think about resolutions, and many of us decide to set them for the new year, but if only a fraction of us are ever successful, why do we keep doing it year after year?
I have several thoughts on this. For starters, I think we aim too high. We shoot for the stars and envision a radically different version of our future selves, when in reality small tweaks to our lifestyles—that we do consistently and faithfully—compound over time to deliver enormous, life-changing results.
James Clear has this fabulous article entitled How to Master the Art of Continuous Improvement. In it, he talks about the power of tiny gains. A small, 1% improvement every single day compounds, so that by the end of the year, you’re 37 times better than where you were when you started.
Don’t set a goal to throw out your entire curriculum and start from scratch, or tear down all of your classroom decorations and completely redecorate your room, or delete all of your Unit 7 materials from your Google Drive and literally recreate the wheel. These goals are utter monstrosities: they are unrealistic, they are overwhelming, and they will burden you in the new year by adding unneeded stress to your plate.
Instead, start off super small, and keep your goals grounded in reality: what can you realistically accomplish to slowly but surely improve your teaching craft—just by 1% each day!—while maintaining boundaries and keeping burnout at bay? Here are some examples of small, realistic goals…goals that you can work on little by little to deliver a significant change over time.
I’m going to take a look at my Spanish 2 curriculum and highlight two or three areas that need improvement. Each month, I’m going to focus on a different unit and think about possible revisions that can be incorporated over time.
That bulletin board in the back of my classroom that I haven’t changed since 2017 is looking pretty ragged. By the end of Marking Period 3, I want to change it out to something that is more fresh, current, and relevant to my students’ lives and interests. Each week, I’m going to spend 10 minutes of my planning period working on the bulletin board.
Each month, I’m going to take a look at my current unit and remove two activities that historically have not been huge successes in my class. I’m going to replace them with two activities that I know my students will be successful with.
Make your goal measurable
One of the reasons we assess students is to measure their performance in concrete, understandable ways. It’s not enough for us to say, “Well, I’m pretty sure my students got it!” How do we know if they have learned the content we have presented to them? We measure it. We collect data. We reflect on the data. If needed, we design interventions…otherwise, we proceed forward.
Our teaching goals need to be measurable as well. It’s not enough to simply say, “I want to incorporate more speaking activities into my lessons this year!” How will you ever know if you’re succeeding at your goal? Change the verbiage of this goal to make it trackable: “Each unit, I will incorporate at least one or two new speaking activities into my lessons.” Or maybe something like, “Every week, I will use speaking task cards with my students on Wednesdays so that they are improving their oral proficiency.”
That way, you can measure your progress throughout the year and pivot, if needed.
Establish a Priority List of Goals
For some, setting one goal is more than enough. If that is you, all the power to you! Focusing on a singular goal that will move the needle in terms of your teaching practice is a wise choice!
For others, however, setting multiple goals that address different aspects of their teaching is the only way to go! If you, like me, fall into this latter category of World Language teachers, consider setting a few good goals for the new year, but as you do so, think about where each goal would fall on your list of priorities.
For example, rearranging your classroom furniture might not be as high on your list of goals as designing new proficiency-based assessments for your Italian 3 class.
This past year, I had two essential goals and one optional goal. I knew that the essential goals would make me a better teacher. The optional goal, if achieved, would be a cherry on the cake, but certainly not essential.
Essential goals can do one or more of the following: improve student learning, lessen your workload, optimize your systems, reduce stress and burnout, address a felt need or missing piece within the curriculum, increase teacher or student self-efficacy.
Optional goals are nice-to-haves, but not essential. Think: rearranging furniture, updating classroom decor, making resources “pretty,” etc.
Create an Action Plan
Many New Year’s Resolutions fail because folks do not lay out concrete steps for achieving their goals. If you say that you are going to convert several of your quizzes to Google Forms, but do not actually consider when you are going to do this, you’re making it waaayyyy more difficult to actually achieve the goal!
For a straightforward, action-based goal such as making all of your photocopies for the entire unit before the unit even begins, you need to set time aside by marking it on your calendar. Make an event on your Google Calendar or leave yourself a note on your desk planner.
For goals that are a bit more complicated or that have several moving pieces, break down the goal into smaller, operationalized chunks. For example, if I wanted to implement more projects in my French class, I might operationalize the goal as such:
By the end of January, I am going to brainstorm TWO project ideas for the spring.
By the end of February, I am going to create the project requirements for Project #1.
By the end of March, I am going to create the project requirements for Project #2.
By mid-April, I am going to create the rubrics for Project #1 and Project #2.
At the end of April and May, I am going to push out Project #1 and Project #2 to my students.
Set check-ins with yourself to monitor your progress
Unfortunately, you can’t just “set it and forget it” with your teaching goals. You need to actively monitor your progress and course correct, if needed. Add some time in your teaching schedule throughout the year to take a look at your goals and reflect on where you’re at with them: have you already accomplished them? are they still a work in progress? have you fallen behind on them? have you completely forgotten about them?!
Many times, I think people fail to reach their goals because they aren’t intentional about progress monitoring. Just like we would never give students a project without first explaining the requirements, giving them time to work on it, checking in with them, answering their questions, etc., we should not hold ourselves accountable for goals that we are not actively monitoring.
Check in with yourself once a month or once every other month and see how far you’ve come. This not only keeps you on track, but it will also inform the next steps you’ll need to take to make your goals a reality.
Keep yourself organized!
I’ve created a World Language Goal Setting Organizer to keep myself organized next year. If you’re interested, please click on the image below to download the organizer for your own use.
I plan on spending the next few weeks thinking about what I would like to focus on pedagogically for next year. I’ll fill out the first four columns for each goal:
I’ll name the goal.
I’ll explain how the goal will improve my teaching.
I’ll detail any and all concrete steps needed to help me achieve my goal.
I’ll create an informal timetable for when I will check in with myself and evaluate how I’m doing with each goal. I’ll then add these check-in times to my Google Calendar.
I’ll then put my Goal Setting Organizer in a folder that I store in the filing cabinet in my classroom. When my check-in notifications pop up on my Google Calendar—which I will set for the first 10-15 minutes of my prep period, once a month—I will grab my folder, take out my organizer, and jot down some notes in the last column, where I update my progress and modify my goal(s), as needed.
Click on the image above to download the organizer!
I hope that this post has helped you get some ideas for the professional goals you’d like to set for yourself in the coming new year, and I hope you’re walking away feeling more empowered to set goals that you will actually be able to follow through with. For me, setting goals for myself in my teaching helps me stay engaged and motivated in this profession. If I don’t set goals for myself, I feel like I begin to stagnate professionally, which is a pretty uncomfortable feeling.
By the way, what are your goals for next year? I’d love it if you’d share them with me in the comment section below!
Happy teaching,
~ Michael
