is me.

~Goals, Aspirations, Plans
2007-02-03 - 5:21 p.m.

I was trying today to come up with some new and effective Professional Goals to list in my digital portfolio. I'm doing this for a few reasons.

The more superficial reason is that one of the Professional Standards developed by the Victorian Institute of Teaching is for teachers to "Reflect on, evaluate and improve their professional knowledge and practice." It therefore looks really good if I can demonstrate my ongoing goal-setting and -achieving.

Perhaps the more potent reason, however, is that I always have things I want to improve on or achieve professionally. I've decided that the best thing to do is to articulate exactly what those things are and plan how I am going to achieve them. Since one of my personal goals this year is to simplify things, I can't work on all thirty-eight things that spring to mind and I'm forcing myself to choose three (four at the very most!) goals.

I am struggling to choose and articulate those goals, though. It's not so much that I can't choose, it's just hard to balance all the different kinds of goals and reasons for choosing them.

I suppose I basically have goals that reflect bigger aspirations and goals that reflect self-perceived weaknesses. On the one hand, I don't want to just focus on the things I'm weaker at because that is uninspiring and also may look to negative for a professional portfolio (for example, imagine if I'd said something like "Goal: To get better at teaching kids to read" - it implies that I may not already be sufficiently competent). However, the areas where I don't consider myself to be as strong as I'd like are fundamental teaching areas that I'd want to work at on a day-to-day basis, so it makes sense to include them. After all, that's part of the keeping it simple thing.

However, I do have bigger goals and if I record them then it not only looks impressive but it commits me to some kind of action. Hm.

I know I can figure this out, but it takes a while to work through it all, just the same. Especially as they partially coincide or clash with other potential plans or goals for the year. For instance, if I don't earn that much then I may not be able to afford training or educational courses that I'd like to do; if I earn enough to move out I still may not have the extra cash for those course; if I earn enough to move out it probably means I'll have a full-time position and may not have the time or energy for those training courses! Likewise, some of the classroom-related things are harder to achieve if I'm in a different class every day. Finally, there may be other personal, tangible goals that take up time and energy (not to mention money), so it would be good not to commit myself to too much.



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All content copyright Janette 2003. Headings from Sway by Bic Runga and Forgive Me by Evanescence.