Friday, August 2, 2013

Setting Goals

At the beginning of each school year, our parents sit down with each of us kids to discuss the coming year.  There are two parts to this meeting - setting goals and signing an educational contract.  Neither meant a lot to me until this year.  Today I will share about goals and I hope that next week you will want to hear about the contract.

I know my mom and adult leaders plan, but the idea of goals was more than I wanted to wrap my head around until recently.  I have always been the kid who is still finishing up the year's work in July while my sister is enjoying a break because she finished her work early.  Honestly, a couple of times I've wondered if I'd get my work complete in time to attend summer camp.  Thankfully, my last-minute scrambling have always paid off and I've finished in the nick of time every time. 

This year was different.  Something clicked in the spring and I realized that if I do an extra math lesson, even every other day, then I'd at least finish on time.  Oh, was that a goal I just set?  I shocked my parents by doing lessons on the weekends and some evenings.  Before I knew it, May was here and I was at the end of the book!  To reward me for finishing so early, my mom let me take a few weeks off of math while I finished out the school year.

In the extra time that I had to think while I wasn't doing math, I realized that I could take this finishing early thing to the next level.  I calculated that I could easily finish each math level in 8 months.  What if I took a short break at the end of each level and then moved on without waiting for the next year to begin?  I could complete high school math during 10th grade and take college classes during 11th and 12th grades! 

Now that it clicked for me, I want to take a minute to share with you a couple of things about our goal-setting.  We write three goals each year: academic, behavioral/social and personal.  Each goal is written in our journal like this:
  • Goal
  • Why it's important
  • Steps I will take to achieve it
  • Help I will need
  • When I plan to accomplish it

My mom made this to help us in our goals:



So what are your goals this year?

1 comment:

  1. Wow Annie! You are so amazing. Your write so well. I love reading your blog and now i am so excited that you want to take college classes by 11th grade! Oh you can do it! SO happy and excited for you! Love Maria

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