Goals and Goal Setting

Having goals is good. But setting attainable yet rigorous goals can be difficult. The situation in which goals are determined and the purpose for which they are set can also differ. Is there something you need to accomplish as part of a team, organization, or group? Or is there something you aspire to personally? As the new year approaches you have probably jotted down a few goals for yourself!

Goal setting is important. In the classroom, goal-setting drives students to be more self-motivated and helps them to focus their efforts in order to accomplish the goal. In many classrooms across the United States, it is best practice for the instructor to have a learning target displayed and explained for every lesson. The learning target is designed to be understood by students and direct the learning agenda. The instructor may refer to the learning target at multiple points in the lesson to show how their activities will help them reach their goal.

“Student Goal Setting: An Evidence Based Practice”, an analysis created by the Midwest Comprehensive Center confirms the benefits that setting goals has to offer. We can see that setting difficult yet attainable goals attributes to deeper learning and understanding and that setting a higher-level goal will push students to higher levels of effort. When students perceive that they are making progress and accomplishing their goals they are further motivated to learn.

Goal setting has been proven to aid learning across all ages and academic ability.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a tool used in education to help educators design thoughtful learning targets. It includes action verbs designed to create goals for specific learning outcomes and range in rigor. Bloom’s taxonomy categorizes cognitive processes into six levels. Starting from the basic level, Bloom’s Taxonomy sorts cognitive processes into these six categories:

Bloom’s Taxonomy

1.      Remembering

2.      Understanding

3.      Applying

4.      Analyzing

5.      Evaluating

6.      Creating

Each level lays the groundwork for students to climb to the highest level of learning.

PBC incorporates this best practice into its environmental education and Social Emotional Learning curricula. When students must work together to accomplish a goal, whether that goal is to climb a rock wall, canoe together, or identify invertebrates, they participate in breaking down and accomplishing the goals that have been set for them or by them. Our facilitators help them bring that learning home by asking the right questions that engage them in analyzing and evaluating their choices.

What are your goals for the new year?

Participants Get INstructed on How to Work together to maneauver their canoe

Order From Chaos

For almost a year, PBC has been providing social emotional learning lessons and resources for teachers and families to use in the new learning environments to which we’ve all had to become accustomed. Each week, an email arrives with a carefully curated lesson designed for teachers and other youth development professionals to use with their students. Lessons are designed to be engaging, fun, and educational and may include activities to develop literacy, environmental education, or social emotional skills. Each one provides questions to follow each activity that can be discussion starters or journal entry prompts.

Earlier this month, one of the lessons was titled “Order From Chaos” as a nod to the chaos we’ve all been experiencing and how there can be order as well. We thought our Compass Points blog readers might like to see one of these activities for themselves and maybe you can play along with your family.

If you would like to receive these emails each week, please email pbc@princetonblairstown.org.

Download the activity here, or see below for the full activity plan.

Activity: Order From Chaos

Students Learn From People They Love

A recent New York Times opinion piece by David Brooks entitled, Students Learn From People They Love, talks about the social emotional learning (SEL) movement’s acceptance as an important and valid educational methodology.

“The good news is the social and emotional learning movement has been steadily gaining strength. This week the Aspen Institute (where I lead a program) published a national commission report called “From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope.” Social and emotional learning is not an add-on curriculum; one educator said at the report’s launch, “It’s the way we do school.” Some schools, for example, do no academic instruction the first week. To start, everybody just gets to know one another. Other schools replaced the cops at the door with security officers who could also serve as student coaches.”

The work that we do at the Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC) around social-emotional learning is exactly what The Aspen Institute report says is at the heart of education. “The promotion of social, emotional, and academic learning is not a shifting educational fad; it is the substance of education itself. It is not a distraction from the “real work” of math and English instruction; it is how instruction can succeed.”

The reason so many independent and charter schools come to the Center every fall, year after year, is that our intentional programming helps faculty and students form positive, supportive relationships with each other.  These schools understand that their time at PBC forms the basis for teaching and learning for the school year.  By taking both teachers and students out of their comfort zones and going through a carefully sequenced set of exercises that build team and crucial 21st century skills like critical-thinking, communication, cooperation, and creativity, PBC helps schools build “climate and culture.” It’s the key to future learning that groups take back to the classroom. 

Schools that come to the Center understand how incorporating social and emotional learning enhances students’ education. According to the Aspen Institute’s report, “It is a mistake to view social and emotional learning as a “soft” approach to education. Quite the opposite. An emphasis on these capacities is not the sacrifice of rigor; it is a source of rigor. While many elements of a child’s life improve along with the cultivation of these skills, one of the main outcomes is better academic performance.”

One of the three core goals of PBC’s award-winning Summer Bridge Program is to build supportive relationships with students and the adults in their lives, recognizing that “students learn from the people they love.”  Our teachers and chaperones speak regularly about how important and impactful this is for them and their students. Follow this link to hear one of our Summer Bridge Program teachers from Wilson Elementary School speak about the benefits of building a relationship at PBC.