Turning Dreams into Reality with SMART Goals & Vision Boards

One of my favorite sessions at #ASCA14 was A Creative Goal-Setting Intervention for Students presented by Lisa Burton. She taught us about Vision Boards. I made my own Vision Board during the session and I can honestly say I feel like it has changed who I am since I returned from #ASCA14.

My husband even noticed that I am not tied to my iPhone, iPad or a book quite as much! Part of my Vision Board was to be more present in every moment--especially family moments. Check out all of my notes (complete with links and additional ideas for using Vision Boards) from the session here.

I also remembered back to my college days when I created a Vision Box, my sorority sisters filled it with notes written to me about their wishes, dreams and hopes for me--I still have it!

Last year I initiated a lessons through our advisory homeroom that prompted every student to set a SMART goal. Every teacher didn't buy into it, therefore every student didn't buy into it, so I was destined to improve it for this school year.

After this session at #ASCA14 I knew the Vision Boards would be the answer. To set the stage I created this Prezi.
The students will also get handouts on SMART Goals and Vision Boards, and a worksheet where they will actually write out a SMART Goal, but the Vision Board will be what they eventually take home to display for their own motivation.

I will open the lesson with a Think-Pair-Share and then talk to them a little bit about memories of learning to ride a bike. I want them to remember how bad they wanted to learn to ride, how they dreamed about it, who helped them, how many times they fell (and maybe even got hurt), but in the end what success felt like.

I integrated the new ASCA Mindsets into the lesson, injected a little humor to keep the students interested, and used lots of quotes for motivation. After the lesson we will create Vision Boards and write SMART goals. I may try to work out a follow up lesson through English where they write a Common Core Narrative to reflect back on the process. We are really trying the infuse the concept of Grit into our curriculum in every class this year so I think this will be a great way to connect my curriculum to the mainstream and illustrate grit.

How do you plan to work with your students to encourage the new ASCA Mindsets? How do you weave the Common Core Standards into your lessons?

Share your tips for working with students to set goals in the comments section below.

Here's a previous posts about how I use Prezi:

Improve your School Counseling Delivery System with Prezi (and Vocaroo)