It’s a New Year. Help your students set goals and reaffirm their learning habits.

As a teacher, we start out each year with certain expectations. Often, by the Christmas break, we are flustered with some of the plans we made which went awry. We notice that some goals we have for our students have not worked out, and often student progress is nowhere near where you had planned it to be. What if you used a system that produced superior goals to reaffirm and/or reset your plans for you and your students? What if you could quickly get back on track? Would that help you out? This article will provide you with an easy to understand set of rules, that when followed, will help you create foolproof goals that will lead to success every time.  Read on and make the second half of your year better than the first!

I always start my New Year by reaffirming or resetting my goals that I set at the beginning of the school year.  If I feel my plan was not working, I may even scrap the whole program and create a new plan and goals from scratch. Often, if your plan is not working it is because you did not use realistic or measurable goals in the first place.

During my college days, I discovered a method for creating goals which served me well for more than 30 years. This method is called using “SMART” goals. “SMART” is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-driven and Time-bound. The primary advantage of using this method for me was this: I could create goals and plans that resulted in success and I would reach my goals in the desired amount of time that was available.

I want to take a few moments and explain the importance of each part of a “SMART” goal. The letter S stands for Specific. If your goal is specific, it will have a higher chance of being obtained than if it were less specific. For example, if I say I want to earn $100 mowing lawns, I am more likely to achieve my goal than if I say I want to make more money doing some-odd jobs. The reason for this is quite simple: being specific gives you focus and focus empowers you.

As a matter of fact, all the letters that make up the word “SMART” are related to being specific in some way. The letter “M” stands for Measurable. If we have a specific number to measure against, your efforts will produce feedback when gauged against your stated goal.

The letter "A" stands for Attainable. Setting realistic goals is very important. If, for example, I set a goal to raise the average FCAT reading score for students in my class by 50% in six months, I’m probably going to fail. It’s an unrealistic goal. On the other hand, if I set my goal to raise the average student score by 8%, I probably have a pretty good chance of obtaining or exceeding this score. Judging what is realistic is somewhat an art. However, if you use prior experience and prior test scores, you can come up with an attainable goal and even a stretch goal for that project or student.  Most of us have heard the saying "shoot for the moon, and if you fail you will still reach the stratosphere". However, the reality is this: if you fail to reach your goal by a large margin, you will find that you become extremely unmotivated and thus will fail to complete the goal.

The letter “R” stands for Results-driven. After each and every test you receive results. These results are then measured against your original goal, which in turn keep you on track. In other words, you test, get results, measure against your goals and then make corrections to move you closer to your goal. This is done over and over again until you run out of time or achieve success.

The last letter is “T” for Time-bound. It’s extremely important that time constraints be placed on your goals. If the timeline for completing your goal is too far away, the chances of being motivated to complete the goal goes way down. Having a realistic (attainable) timeline can make or break your chances of succeeding.

In school, we need to create lesson plans, S.E.P.’s and I.E.P.’s that meet “SMART” criteria.  If we fail to make every effort to use “SMART” goals, we take a grave chance that we will fail at helping our student obtain the knowledge and skill they trust us to provide them with.

When I first became a teacher, I found that using “SMART” goals actually took the pressure off me, so I could concentrate on helping my students learn. By spending the time needed to create specific, measurable, attainable, results-driven and time-bound goals, I was able to significantly improve my lesson plans. More importantly, I could gauge whether I was making progress with my students or just spinning my wheels.

Do yourself and your students a favor by using “SMART” goals. Use them in your classroom and personal life. Better yet, teach your students how to create and use SMART goals themselves. You know the old saying, “give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.” Give your students a skill that they can use for a lifetime. Teach your students SMART goals and their work will gradually get smarter.

There you have the process for using “SMART” goals to make sure you and your students stay on track. Armed with your new knowledge for making plans, you will be able to create “SMART” goals that have the greatest chance for success. Make sure you show this method to as many students and friends as you can. It will make their life easier and undoubtedly increase their ability to achieve success - something we all want more of in our lives. We welcome your thoughts on this subject. Please leave your comments in the designated area and let us know what you think. I use “SMART” goals every day. Using them has had an enormous impact on my life. I know it can make a huge impact on yours, as well.

Thanks for visiting and sharing your thoughts. Happy New Year to you and yours from us here at A Quantum Leap. We hope 2012 will be your best year yet!

Until next time, Hector Cisneros

What do you think is an appropriate holiday gift for a Teacher?

It’s the week before school lets out for the Christmas break. Your kids are coming home and talking about buying a gift for their favorite teacher/s. What do you do? Go out and buy your child a gift to bring in? Do you help your child create a personalized gift, or do you just buy a gift card at Target and pack it in a Christmas card to bring to school?

Every year my wife and I are confronted with this dilemma. Over the years, we have solved this problem in many different ways. In this article, I will discuss several of the answers we came up with. I will also discuss how much we spent, how we came up with the amount to spend, why we made those purchase decisions and how we engaged our son in a process to learn how to select gifts for others.

I have a special needs child (he is a high functioning autistic child). I only mention this because I believe that the teaching method I described in this article will work for typical kids, as well. They will learn just a little faster, will require less input from you, and learn at an earlier age than my son did.

Anyway, when my son was young, he did not fully understand the concept of gift giving to others. This is typical of most children. If they embrace the idea of giving, they usually chose gifts that they like instead of gifts the other person would like. My wife and I decided that we would help our son choose a gift by staying within a specific price range. We selected the 10 to 20 dollar range because it is often considered reasonable for most type’s gift giving events. This is also enough money to buy craft supplies to make your own gifts.

We would also go through the trouble of asking other parents and teachers at his school what his teacher liked. This also would help narrow our focus and lead our son to choose the right type gift. The final decision would always be our sons, but we wanted to make sure his teacher would always enjoy their present.

As he has gotten older, we have asked him to set the dollar limits himself. After learning to set the dollar limits, we then taught him to use his own money to buy gifts. Our goal was to help our son learn about the joy of giving to others instead of him just getting gifts for Christmas.

Most years, the 10 to 20 dollar limit was perfect. In most cases, he would choose items in that range. When he started using his own money he always seemed to spend a little more, (about $25).

Over the past 10 years, we have helped our child select many different gifts. Here, is a partial list of what was chosen, (to the best of my recollection). The selection was based on something that was unique to that teacher, that year. The explanation of why that gift was chosen follows the gift description.

 A coffee mug; His teacher that year loved coffee. A picture frame; his teacher that year loved taking pictures. A gift card to Target; he would often see his teacher shopping at Target that year. Created and painted, and fired ceramic turtle; his teacher loved figurines. A gift card to Home Depot; his teacher that year just moved into a new apartment. A gift card to Babies R Us; his teacher that year was pregnant and due in May. Movie Tickets for two; that year his teacher started dating one of the other teachers. A fleece blanket and a book; his teacher loved reading, and he felt that the blanket would help in winter. A gas card; his teacher that year was always complaining about the cost of gas. A fancy blue pen and pencil set, (which he had engraved); his teacher that year liked the color blue and had her initials on everything she owned. A coffee mug with a picture of his classmates on it; that year my son genuinely felt connected to the other students and felt his teacher would like remembering the class as a whole.

The point I’m trying to make here is that we emphasized the importance of selecting a gift that would bring his teacher joy. We did not emphasize the cost of the gift. We only used the price range to create focus and help learn about money.  We knew that by sticking to this method, that his teachers would also associate the selection process with the joy of our sons giving.

Now my son is 15, and he selects the gifts for his favorite teacher/s himself. We have expanded on this gift giving “lesson” by having our son buy a gift for Toys for Tots each year. He now buys the gifts with his own money. He even wraps the gifts. We have also been able to extend this lesson to all gift giving.  He now picks out and buys birthday gifts and cards for his friends and classmates, all with his own money.

My son now looks forward to gift giving opportunities, (when he has money). Yes, there are times when he has no money and mom and dad pitch in helping him out. However, it’s gratifying to know that he now has a better understanding of the value of money. When he needs it, he will ask for it, and we can now have him “earn” it by doing other chores.  More importantly he also understands the joy of giving, and that is the true reward from this lesson.

I have told you how my family met this challenge. We turned an ordinary gift selecting chore into a learning process for our son. First we set a limit on how much would be spent. Second we investigated what the teacher interests were that year. Third all three of us would select a few gifts that met our selection criteria and then we let our son make the final select selection. Who knew that choosing a gift for the teacher could be this educational?

We would love to hear from you. How does your family choose a Christmas gift for the teacher? Tell us how you solved your gift giving dilemma. Let us hear your ideas. Please post your thoughts and comments in the comment section of this blog. We want to thank you for being with us during the holidays. We wish you and your family a Happy Holiday and a Merry Christmas.  Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

This is Hector Cisneros for A Quantum Leap, until next time.