New Year, New You: Strategies for Goal Achievement

“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” — Fitzhugh Dodson

It’s 2025 and we all know what that means.  The new year often brings a wave of renewed motivation and a desire for positive change. Whether improving fitness, launching a new business, or simply cultivating more mindfulness, setting and achieving goals can significantly enhance our lives, both personally and professionally. However, the road to success is rarely linear. This year, consider and approach to goal setting with a focus on realistic strategies and sustainable habits.

Set SMART Goals

Let’s begin with a tried-and-true strategy. One of the most effective frameworks for goal setting is the SMART method (Locke & Latham, 2002). Below are the specifics, which many of you probably already know:

• Specific: Clearly define your objectives. Instead of "get in shape," aim for "run a 5k in under 30 minutes by June."
• Measurable: Track your progress with quantifiable metrics.
• Achievable: Set challenging but attainable goals to maintain motivation.
• Relevant: Ensure your goals align with your values and overall life vision.
• Time-bound: Establish deadlines to create a sense of urgency.

Break Down Large Goals

While ambition is a good thing, we must take a practical approach to succeed. Overwhelming goals can quickly lead to discouragement. Divide significant objectives into smaller, more manageable steps (Bandura, 1997). This creates a sense of accomplishment as you tick off each milestone, boosting motivation and momentum. Remember, a win is a win, no matter how small it might seem at the time. 

Build Sustainable Habits

Stephen A. Brennan said, “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act.”  Actions need to be sustained. Focus on creating lasting habits rather than quick fixes. Small, consistent actions are more likely to lead to long-term success than drastic, unsustainable changes (Lally, van der Merwe, Potts, & Wardle, 2010).

Cultivate Self-Compassion

We all need to be realistic. Setbacks are inevitable, so mentally plan for them now. Instead of dwelling on failures, practice self-compassion (Neff, 2003). Acknowledge your challenges, learn from your mistakes, and adjust your approach as needed.

Find Support

Surround yourself with a supportive network of colleagues, friends, family, or a mentor. Sharing your goals with others can increase accountability and provide encouragement along the way (Uchino, 2009). Having someone to talk to about your challenges can help you manage stress and maintain a positive mindset. It can make the journey more enjoyable, manageable, and ultimately, more successful.

Achieving goals requires dedication, perseverance, and a realistic approach. By setting SMART goals, breaking down large objectives, cultivating sustainable habits, practicing self-compassion, and seeking support, you can increase your chances of success and create a fulfilling and meaningful year. You got this now go slay 2025! 

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.

Lally, P., van der Merwe, N., Potts, H. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009.   

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task performance. American Psychologist, 57(9), 702-717.   

Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of self-regard. Self and Identity, 2(1), 85-101.

Uchino, B. N. (2009). Social support and health: Overview. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 22(1), 48-51.

Top Posts of 2024

I must say that 2024 has been crazy in a good way. It was the first full year that my consultancy, Aspire Change EDU, served education systems worldwide.  While this kept me super busy, it also impacted my blogging schedule.  Well, that and the fact that it is so difficult to come up with unique topics to write about.  I must not be the only one in this boat, as there are fewer and fewer education bloggers these days.  Upon reflection, I might readjust my goal of one post a week, which I have stuck with since 2010, to one per month. Writing must come naturally and not be forced.

Another thing I have noticed is that readership is way down.  Either my blogging skills have deteriorated over the years, or maybe people just don’t read as much anymore. Regardless, my blog has always been a space for me to reflect and align relevant contexts to strategies and issues that educators can relate to meaningfully.  For someone who never saw themself as a writer, I am proud that I have stuck with it this long.  My hope is to churn out at least one more book. Time will tell on this goal.

Without further ado, here are my Top Blog posts of 2024 based on views.

Compliance vs Engagement

Personalize: Meeting the Needs of All Learners

11 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools to Support Effective Teaching and Leadership

Quantifying Innovative Practices

The Fallacy of Best Practices

Here's to a fantastic 2025!  If you have any ideas that you think I should write about please share in the comments. 

A New Era of Educational Leadership: The AI Advantage

A few weeks back, my friend Monica Burns reached out and asked to share some insight on my favorite artificial intelligence (AI) tool for a blog post she was writing. Since she was gathering perspectives from numerous educators, I wanted to avoid the well-known tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini. Thus, my decision was easy as I was able to zero in on one that I use routinely, which not only helps me when coaching, but also can be invaluable to practicing school leaders.  Here’s why.  To make data-enhanced decisions, it's crucial to have access to reliable and relevant research, something I stress in Digital Leadership extensively.  Consensus AI offers a powerful solution, enabling leaders to quickly and efficiently access peer-reviewed research to support and validate change initiatives.

What is Consensus AI?

Consensus AI is an advanced artificial intelligence platform designed to help educators find and understand complex research. By leveraging natural language processing and machine learning, this tool can quickly sift through vast amounts of scholarly literature to identify the most relevant studies. This allows school leaders to spend less time searching and more time analyzing and applying research findings.

How Can School Leaders Utilize Consensus AI?

It can be leveraged to curate support for evidence-based practices, ensuring that teachers have access to the most effective strategies to enhance student learning. Below are some specific examples:

1. Identify Evidence-Based Practices:
• Targeted Searches: Use Consensus AI to search for specific educational practices or interventions, such as early literacy strategies or behavior management techniques.
• Curate a Knowledge Base: Build a digital library of evidence-based practices that can be shared with teachers and staff.
2. Validate Proposed Initiatives 
• Research Review: Before implementing a new program or policy, use Consensus AI to review existing research on its effectiveness.
• Identify Potential Pitfalls: Uncover potential challenges or limitations that may arise from a particular approach.
3. Support Professional Learning:
• Personalized Learning: Tailor professional learning opportunities to the specific needs of individual educators.
• Collaborative Learning: Facilitate discussions among educators by providing access to shared research resources.
4. Inform Policy Decisions:
• Data-Driven Policymaking: Use Consensus AI to identify research that supports or refutes proposed educational policies.
• Advocate for Evidence-Based Practices: Present compelling evidence to policymakers to secure funding and support for innovative initiatives.

The Benefits of Using Consensus AI

Consensus AI empowers school leaders to make sound decisions by providing quick and easy access to peer-reviewed research, ultimately leading to improved student outcomes. Thus, there are many benefits, such as:

• Time Efficiency: Quickly access and understand complex research.
• Improved Decision-Making: Make informed choices based on credible evidence.
• Enhanced Professional Learning: Provide educators with high-quality resources to support their growth. 
• Increased Accountability: Demonstrate the impact of evidence-based practices.
• Stronger Advocacy: Use data to advocate for effective policies and programs.

By embracing Consensus AI, school leaders can revolutionize their approach to educational improvement. By leveraging the power of AI, they can ensure that their decisions are grounded in sound research, leading to better outcomes for all students.

Addressing Gaps in Practice with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Unless you are living under a rock, AI is all the rage right now, and rightfully so.  It can revolutionize various practices by addressing gaps in efficiency, accuracy, and decision-making. By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI algorithms can uncover patterns and trends that human analysts may miss, leading to more informed and effective strategies. For instance, in healthcare, AI-powered tools can analyze patient data to predict disease outbreaks, optimize treatment plans, and streamline administrative tasks. In finance, AI can detect fraudulent activities, automate trading, and provide personalized financial advice.

Furthermore, AI can enhance human capabilities by automating repetitive tasks and augmenting decision-making processes. By freeing up time and resources, professionals can focus on more complex and creative tasks. For example, AI can assist lawyers in legal research, helping them identify relevant case law and regulations more efficiently. In the creative industries, AI can generate ideas, design products, and compose music, inspiring human creativity and innovation. As AI advances, its potential to address gaps in practice and improve various industries is immense.

So, what does this mean for educators? In coaching work with leaders, my Aspire Change EDU team and I facilitate numerous coaching cycles over the course of a year. During these visits, we collect a great deal of qualitative and quantitative evidence to analyze as part of the feedback process. We then use questioning techniques, research, and evidence to identify gaps in practice. There is typically consensus around the same practices that represent opportunities for growth, such as:

• Hooks at the beginning of the lesson
• Scaffolding questions to bump up thinking
• Relevance 
• Closure (exit tickets) at the end
• Developing common formative assessments (CFA’s) to obtain usable data to personalized and use in PLC’s
• Use of data in the classrooms to group, regroup, and differentiate as well as for interventions
• Data analysis for PLC’s
• Rubric development (especially when using an arbitrary scoring guide)
• Unpacking standards into learning targets

These are just a few areas where, once identified, AI can help to address the gap in practice with instant suggestions. During a recent coaching visit a modeled how this could be done.  After visiting high school classrooms most of the day, I then debriefed with the leadership team. Questions were used to calibrate and flesh out growth opportunities.  In this case, it was determined that even though teachers had time and were expected to be implementing common formative assessments (CFA,s), we didn’t see evidence to support that this was happening.  We also identified the need to utilize lesson hooks at the beginning of the class and find ways to make the standards relevant.  It was at this point that I modeled how AI could be used.

Below are the three prompts that I entered into Google Gemini. The beauty of this was that I could build on each previous response and didn’t have to re-enter the standard. 

Prompt 1: Create a 3-problem scaffolded formative assessment (easy, moderate, challenging) for this standard: A-SSE.1.a: Interpret parts of an expression, such as terms, factors, and coefficients.

Easy: Identify the coefficient in the following expression:

• 5x + 2

Moderate: Consider the expression: 3x^2 - 7x + 4

• How many terms are in the expression?
• Identify the coefficient of the x^2 term.

Challenging: Given the expression: 2πr(r + h)

• What does the "2πr" represent in terms of a cylinder?
• How many factors are in the expression?

Prompt 2: Create a hook based on this standard to begin the lesson

"Imagine you're a detective, and you're given a mysterious code. To crack the code, you need to understand its hidden parts. Today, we're going to be detectives of algebra, breaking down expressions to uncover their secrets. We'll learn how to identify the clues, or the parts of an expression, that will help us solve algebraic puzzles."

Prompt 3: How can a teacher make this standard relevant for students

Real-World Connections:

• Geometry: Relate coefficients to dimensions in formulas like the area of a rectangle (A = lw) or the volume of a rectangular prism (V = lwh).
• Physics: Discuss how coefficients represent physical quantities in equations like force (F = ma) or kinetic energy (KE = 0.5mv^2).
• Finance: Explain how coefficients influence financial calculations, such as interest rates in compound interest formulas or tax rates in income tax calculations.

Engaging Activities:

• Expression Match-Up: Create cards with expressions and their corresponding parts (terms, factors, coefficients). Students can match the cards to reinforce understanding.
• Real-World Expression Creation: Have students write expressions to represent real-world scenarios, such as calculating the cost of a phone plan with a base fee and per-minute charge.
• Expression Building Game: Use blocks or tiles to represent different parts of an expression. Students can build expressions and identify their components.
• Error Analysis: Present students with incorrect interpretations of expressions and have them identify and correct the mistakes.

As you can see, AI can be an invaluable tool for teachers, administrators, and coaches if and only if used after the gaps in practice have been identified. It is not a substitute for teaching and leading but an on-demand support that can help save time and maximize your impact.