Visualizing SMART Goals through Comic Strips
According to the article “The Science of Goal Setting” published by Forbes in 2017, “There’s some impressive science to back up goal setting. … A Harvard Business Study found that the 3% of graduates from their MBA who had their goals written down, ended up earning ten times as much as the other 97% put together, just ten years after graduation.” Students shouldn’t wait until their final college years to learn the importance of visualizing their own success.
I started this school year by teaching my English language learners the S.M.A.R.T acronym for goal setting. The S.M.A.R.T acronym is a great tool for anyone who is interested in creating clear and concise goals with measurable results. The acronym stands for specific, measurable, authentic, relevant, and time-based. Students were encouraged to narrow their goals to something that could be easily assessed and authentic to them.
For example, saying that you want to make good grades wasn’t an acceptable S.M.A.R.T goal. Students were required to narrow the goal to measurable requirements that could be attained in a specific amount of time, such as a school year or semester. Once the students had completed their goals, I asked them to take their goal setting one step further and visualize their success. Students used the website, storyboardthat.com, to create a comic strip starring themselves completing their S.M.A.R.T goal.
The process of visualizing their goals and creating the comic strip required my students to think critically about the goal that they had set for themselves. They needed to decide if this goal was really important to them, then what steps were truly necessary to achieve this goal. Critical thinking is required to visualize a goal and create action steps to achieve that goal. This is the integral piece that gives students the edge when it comes to measuring the success of their proposed goals set at the beginning of the school year.
With half the school year behind us, it is a good time to revisit the goals that students set for themselves at the beginning of the school year. Students can reassess their goals by asking themselves if the goals they started the school year with are still relevant and authentic to them. If so, are they still following the steps that they visualized in their comic strips at the beginning of the school year or do they need to change their goal? Reflection and reassessment are important to maintaining focus on goals for students. As their teacher, I like to guide students to reflect on their goals by asking questions that cause students to consider their progress and motivation. It’s good to remind students that goals are not static, but can change over time as you learn about what you truly value.
In the coming weeks, I will ask my students to reassess their goals again. At the end of the school year, students will be asked to give a final reflection on the goals they set for themselves. They will need to decide if they reached their goal based on the measurements they set for themselves and decide the value of this goal to their lives.