Goals

I signed a lot of Professional Development Plans this week, and I always find it interesting how differently teachers in the same building can write up a goal. Some teachers write highly detailed language that could rival the best AI bots. Others write very simple sentences that get right to the point. Some sit down to complete the task as soon as they can, ready to mark it off their list. Others put it off until they are forced to get it done. (Yes, I'm talking about you if you haven't done yours yet!) There's no right or wrong way to have a goal. The only things you can do wrong are to not have one or to forget to guide one. Having goals is similar to tending a garden. If you never plant seeds, it's pretty foolish to expect plants to grow. And if you don't water and fertilize those plants, they probably won't yield much fruit. 

If you're normal, the professional and personal goals that most of put on your PDP aren't always fully capable of capturing what you really want to accomplish in a school year. Your department developed a goal that's likely centered on curriculum, something new that came your way, or a problem that needs fixing. Those are pretty formal. But the bigger question is what do you want to get out of the next ten months that we call a school year? How do you expect to change? I forced myself to take a dose of my own medicine this week and think about those things as I sat down to write my own PDP. Like most of you, I kept that document pretty formal, but afterward, I wrote out some goals of my own and I'm going to do my best to water and fertilize those goals this year so that the change I want is actually something that I'm working towards. So if are like me and you didn't take the time to write those things down in a PDP this year, do it for yourself. Otherwise, you might find yourself staring at bare dirt, while gardens around you found ways to grow.