Goal Setting - Where Do You Start?

Have I mentioned yet that we are excited to have a hockey player as a mentor?  Having the original tour Kieran gave us of the Hockey Canada training facility really created some excitement in our students.  One of them mentioned that they bet it took a lot of work to get to that point.  "Yes," I replied.  "Did they think it happened overnight?" This is where our discussion of goal setting started.

After watching Kieran's video on goal setting, the students set about brainstorming different things that they would like to accomplish/improve this year.  From that list, they had to choose one school related goal.  The reason (because you know they asked why it had to be school related) was because we wanted our classmates to be able to support us once our goals were posted.

From there, they had to create three supporting or short term goals that they felt would help to get them to their long term goal.  This proved hard for some.  We needed to refer to the SMART goal framework to see that great goals needed to be measurable.  How would they know they achieved it?  How could their peers support them when they were successful or needed help?

Once our goals were set, it was time to put them into play.  I printed off templates of a number of different hockey rinks.  We set the goal line as the long term goal as that was ultimately where they wanted to get.  The stopping and starting points were the face-off circles.  This is where we placed our short term goals as any long term goal needed a place to start.  In one of my classes, we have a goalie.  We used this as a teachable moment for the non hockey players to explain when the play would go to each face-off circle.  He was in his glory.

The students put the extra finishing touches on their rinks through the use of goal related sponsors (Yamaha sponsored a lot of the band goals) and fans in the stands. The students were excited to post their goals for their classmates to see.  Many of them were up and reading them right away and looking for ways they could support each other.  I love the sense of camaraderie that posting our goals creates.  I look forward to seeing them work together to achieve their first set of goals.