Award-winning educator Valerie Bolling has written a book about setting writing goals to make the writing process more accessible for students and more manageable for teachers.

In addition to her 30-year education career, Bolling has written over 10 books for children; Goal Setting in the Writing Classroom: Building Student Agency, Independence, and Success is her first book for teachers, but she has two others on the way.

LF: There are lots of topics in the world of education to write about. What made you decide to write a book on goal setting and, making it even more specific, on goal setting with student writing?

I was inspired to write a book about setting writing goals because I know that writing can be difficult for some students, and teaching students how to write can be challenging for teachers. Since I’ve witnessed firsthand how putting goal-setting practices in place benefited students in my own classroom, and in the classrooms where I served as an instructional coach, I wanted to share ideas and strategies that will help students become more capable, confident writers and provide a structure teachers can use to facilitate this growth.

What particularly motivated me to write this book is that students will see their achievement and feel proud of what they’ve accomplished. They will recognize that setting goals and focusing on them works!

I’ve had former students reach out to me to thank me for how much they improved as writers in my classroom. They still remember their writers’ notebooks in which they worked on their writing goals and grammar lessons they learned. They also remember winning contests and having their work published in poetry anthologies and other student publications as a result of work they did in our classroom.

I know setting goals works inside and outside of the classroom, in writing and beyond writing. We just need a good teacher, coach, and/or community to guide us along the path, hold us accountable, and cheer us on. I hope that this book will give teachers the tools to do all of this for their students and to lead them to become writers who have agency over what they write, independence in their thinking, and, ultimately, success as writers.

LF: I always faced two major challenges when I tried goal setting with students. One was to find the time to fit in the goal-setting process. What two or three pieces of advice would you offer to teachers about how and why to make the time to add it into what they’re doing.

I understand that it can be tough to find the time to fit the goal-setting process into all that teachers are required to do. It can seem like an “extra” that you just can’t seem to add to your schedule. However, if you make the time for it, it will be worth it for your students.

Making the effort to set up this process for your students will require additional time, initially, but the more you focus on goal setting in your classroom, and make it a natural part of “business as usual,” the easier it will become for you to incorporate it into your normal routine—and your students will accept it as part of the regular routine, too.

In my book, I say:

While these lessons may take some “extra” time as you get started, the goal is that they become integrated into your normal lesson plans and classroom routines. If you want to create a classroom environment where everyone learns together, shares with each other, and encourages and celebrates each other’s achievements, then adding goal setting to your repertoire is a smart instructional move.

Therefore, these are the three tips I would offer to help with time management:

1. Integrate goal setting into your lesson plans. When you’re planning your lessons, integrate goal setting into those plans. There will be some stand-alone lessons you’ll teach, but much of the work should occur more organically. For example, at the beginning of a writing lesson, you could ask students to set an intention for their work by choosing one of their goals to focus on. At the end of a lesson, you might ask students how they worked on a particular goal in their writing that day. At another time, you might do a quick check-in on progress by asking students to jot one of their goals and an example that shows how they worked on it or where they still need help.
   
2. Use your calendar to help plan. You won’t necessarily focus on goals daily, but a calendar will help you keep track of how often you are engaging in this work. You may randomly pick days on your calendar where you write: “Check in on students’ writing goals.” That should serve as reminder to set aside time to do this, if you haven’t done so recently.
   
3. Share the responsibility with your students. Allow your students choice about when they’ll work on particular goals and share that information with you. This means you’ll have more flexibility because you won’t have to attend to all of your students’ goal-setting needs at once. Your calendar can also help with this because you’ll want to give students a particular window of time when they’ll need to check in with you, and, of course, they’ll need reminders.

LF: The second major challenge I always faced was finding the time, and remembering, to integrate having students follow up on their goals once they made them. Again, what two or three pieces of advice would you offer to teachers about how they can do that?

If you make goal setting a part of your lesson plans, it will happen. As I say in my book: “Goal setting works best when we are continuously chipping away at our goals, rather than just revisiting them only once in a while.”

Here are some specific tips that may help you remember how to be consistent with goal setting:

1. Use a calendar to record check-in dates. As mentioned in my response to the preceding question, a calendar can be helpful with this goal-setting work. Put check-in dates on your calendar, and in your lesson plans, that correlate to certain assignments, assessments, and/or time periods, like before or after breaks or near the end of marking periods. What you’ll also want to do, a couple of weeks before, is write on your calendar when these check-in dates are coming up, so that you can prepare yourself and your students for them.
   
2. Provide time for students to work on goals in their regular assignments. Some goal-setting work will need to be planned for a class period or two—and facilitated by you—but students can work and reflect on their goals in current assignments/assessments, which doesn’t require any extra time for you to plan.
   
3. Collaborate with colleagues. If you are doing this work with colleagues, you can plan together and keep each other accountable. You can also share information about your students and what you are doing to help them achieve their goals. It’s always better when you do something in community with others.

LF: How do you think the goal-setting suggestions you make enhance student agency?

The goal setting that I believe in and describe in my book enhances student agency because students are taking the lead with teacher guidance. They choose their own goals and how they want to work on them. They monitor their goals and reflect on their progress. They meet with peers for feedback as well as with their teacher, and when they have these meetings, they choose what they want to discuss and get feedback on.

In my book, I share why it’s important to allow students to select their own goals:

When we have students create their own self-selected goals, it doesn’t just lead to academic success, it also grants students agency over their own learning. Selecting and setting goals helps students figure out what they do best as learners; it helps them figure out what they should continue to do and where they may need support to continue to grow.

Here’s a Goal Setting Organizer from the book that shows an example of how students have agency over both the goals they select to work on in their writing and the strategies they will use to work toward those goals.

During every part of the goal-setting process, I encourage teachers to provide students with choice. From the start, students choose their own goals and the strategies they want to use to work toward them. As their teacher, you will provide your students with ideas and suggestions, but, ultimately, they will make their own choices. They will look at their own writing and feedback on their writing to determine what goals would be best for them to work on.

Even when students monitor their progress at different points throughout the year, they get to decide if they feel they have achieved a goal, need to work on it more, or if they want to abandon it altogether and perhaps choose another goal.
Since students will receive feedback on their writing from peers, and will also have writing conferences with you, your input will be taken into consideration as they make their decisions.

Giving students agency means trusting them to make smart choices. If they make choices that aren’t the best, they can always revise their goals and their writing. That’s part of the learning process. I want your students to feel supported by you but also invested in their goals and in control of their learning. This is an essential balance.

LF: Thanks, Valerie!