A set of personal goals in a teacher’s life is important because it acts as a guideline to ensure that it strengthens his or her career and also benefit the students. These goals can be divided into three major sections such as personal goals, organizational goals and lesson improvement goals.
Personal Goals
According to Goodlad and McMannon (2004), personal goals enables a teacher to remain healthy, physically and emotionally equipped in order to be able to face the challenges ahead. The first goal is to ensure that his or her appearance is professional. Secondly is enjoying teaching as a heart chosen career. Third is forming a better relationship with other staff members and fourth is staying positive no matter the challenges. Lastly is the improvement of teacher and parents’ relationship.
How to Achieve Personal Goals
Appearing like a professional means that one must have a well established educational background and is able to share his or her knowledge with the students and other teachers. Secondly is taking the teaching career as a hobby. It should be seen as something enjoyable. Interacting well with other staff members creates a strong understanding ground for everyone within the institution. Living a stress-free life is important because it helps someone in living a simple and healthy life. This enables one to remain focused in his or her daily activity. It is achieved through regular body exercise after long hours of working (Burke, 2002)
Organizational Goals
Being well organized enables a teacher to put up his or her plans well. Organizational goals include having a perfectly arranged filing cabinet, planning one week ahead in every subject, putting things in their respective places, keeping two different files for each student and a record for the lessons or units that have been covered is also important. Lastly is improvement of documentation files.
How to Achieve Organizational Goals
A well arranged file cabinet enables one to access easily on urgently required documents. This is achieved through frequent arrangement of files after visiting the cabinet. Planning for the subject ahead is also achieved by looking at the content of each topic and doing a thorough research on it. This enables one to have courage in standing before the students while teaching. Putting things in their respective areas is easy if made as a daily routine after the teaching. Having two files helps the teachers to understand their students’ performance in class and their behaviors. Documentation of files can be achieved by being updated every day.
Lesson Improvement Goals
A quality lesson given to students by their teacher produces good academic results and a well-behaved class of students. This goals include, minimization of time wastage, incorporating literature in other lessons, providing journals to students and creating more time on building up vocabulary and concept development. Others include having substitute plans that can be used when others fail, use of advanced technology in the classroom and lastly giving the students more examination tests and homework so that they can be serious with their academics.
How to Achieve Lesson Improvement Goals
According to Burke (2002), minimization of time wasted can be achieved by setting up more time during morning hours before the classes begin, during break time and after the evening classes. This enables a teacher to cover the syllabus early enough so that it can give room for revision. Vocabulary and concept development is achievable through frequent use in class while teaching. Lastly is the giving of examination tests to the students. It is achieved by setting up a specific period of time for after two weeks of learning. This helps the students to be familiar with the question that they should expect in their end term examination.
References
Burke, L. (2002). The Teachers Ultimate Planning Guide. New York: Crown Press.
Goodlad, I. J., & McMannon, J. T. (2004). The Teaching Career. New York: Teachers College Press.