11 February 2022

We are now at the end of 'Week 2' and revving up into upcoming Goal Setting meetings.

I'm not a great one for New Year Resolutions, probably because I go too many and too big and totally unachievable.

You may have it nailed - but for many of us, as adults, needing to do this for our professional lives as well as more personal goals it can be a daunting task. Then we ask our children to do exactly this - with you and their teachers. There are a few tricks to it!

Goal setting is about achievement, working towards a known and accomplishing something.

Goals can be big or small, often lofty goals will need smaller sub goals or steps tp help us get there

Satisfaction is gained when we know we have got there and made a difference.

When we set goals with our children we need to help them with the waypower! What are the incremental steps on the way to getting there?. Like climbing the rungs of a ladder.

Swinging on the monkey bars tends to be a self selected goal some of our smaller children want to set. Parents and teachers sit there thinking.... but what about the spelling! What about the speaking up in class... etc! But reframing it to what will they need to start doing if they want to achieve this - well, they may need to take a risk, show courage, practice...... all good things across learning!

We like to get a good balance between things we know children need to work on, a strength goal and some purely self selected. Goals work if they are in our control, our skill matches and we can connect to them. The Self Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 2000) provides some useful thinking as to appropriateness.

It's good to share goals with others thoughtfully with a select few people who can help. It's quite funny - if you are hoping to tackle something major - don't make it too public or sing it from the rooftops. Apparently, people, impressed by your desire to achieve X will start congratulating you..... you get the dopamine hit.... and are less likely to take the challenge up. Interesting!

Like many of you, the Staff set goals at the start of each year. Part of this process is looking at our health. The 'healthier' we are, the better our performance, the better it will be for our Worser Bay School children. I thought I'd share the booklet we always use for the setting of our 'SPIRE Goals' each year. The staff have a SPIRE Buddy - who keeps them accountable..... but we don't share it widely! You may be interested in giving it a go. This also links well with our Positive Education Programme.

This year, we planned to have regular parent coffee mornings to chat about concepts that make up our strong school foundation in Positive Education. Unfortunately, we will hold off until settings change and we can connect more naturally. In the meantime, you can expect some guidance from the Base Group teacher as to how the Goal Setting meetings will roll out and what to be thinking about / chatting to your child about.