teacher’s class where goals are advanced or expert level, not just basic proficiency. Starting the first day of school, strong teachers encourage students to set the long-term bar sky-high. For the moment, don’t worry about buy-in. Later in this chapter, I’ll show you how you get students to believe (with even more strategies in chapter 17, page 171).
You might say, “But what if the student does not work hard?” Actually, whether a student works hard, or not, is a choice the student makes, and it is not genetic. It is based on a host of factors, but these four factors are near the top of the list (Dweck, 2002; Stipek, 2002).
1. Students’ prediction of whether success is possible and expectancy of personal success based on their past
2. Their perceptions about their teacher’s capacity to help them succeed
3. Students’ self-assessment
4. Their overall self-concept
The good news is, you can influence every single one of these four factors. In this chapter, we begin with the baseline tools you need for creating gutsy goals that lead to mastery, look at the practice of setting those goals, establish ways you can get buy-in from students (give them a reason to believe), and then use micro goals to help close any gaps.
Creating Gutsy Goals for Mastery
Gutsy goals are jaw-dropping, nearly impossible, shoot-for-the-stars milestones. In 1962, President Kennedy’s gutsy national goal was to land a man on the moon and return him safely before the end of the decade (Kennedy, 1962), which the United States achieved in 1969. However inevitable it might seem in hindsight, he set the goal before the science had even been invented to reach the goal.
Use this concept to get students pumped up about something far greater than finishing a chapter in a textbook or merely passing the class. Why would you set goals you might not reach? James Cameron, director of two of the highest-grossing films of all time (Titanic and Avatar), said we should set impossibly high goals so that when we fail, we will fail above others’ successes (as cited in Goodyear, 2009). For teachers, this means setting goals of mastery, not merely basic understanding or proficiency. Setting goals for mastery is what leads all students to graduate (see part seven, page 185).
The mastery process is one where a teacher says, “I don’t just want them to get it right. I want them to become so proficient that they can’t get it wrong. Only then will we move on.” In mastery, there is no personal best or just good enough. Remember, even modest, achievable goals have a positive 0.52 effect size (one year’s gain), but mastery as a goal has a huge 0.96 effect size (two years of growth) for disadvantaged and lower-ability students (Kulik & Kulik, 1987). High-performing, high-poverty schools have this core achievement driver (mastery, not basic or proficiency levels) in common, and it’s a must for your classroom (Johnson, Uline, & Perez, 2014).
Yes, mastery can take an extra 10 to 50 percent more classroom time (which is always at a premium). This extra classroom time is something you can typically invest on more varied uses of a new skill, under differing conditions—first solo, then with partners (refer to the fifty-fifty rule, page 21)—as well as invoking more stressful conditions. This extra time pays off dramatically in improved student performance over the long term.
Understand, the big-picture goal is the process as well as the destination. This means gutsy goals are those you cannot meet until you grow into one who can reach them. To that end, the best gutsy goals are revised SMART goals (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2014).
• Strategic and specific
• Measurable
• Amazing (rather than attainable)
• Relevant (rather than results oriented)
• Time bound
Remember, the mastery process is not just about content. It’s about helping students develop lifelong competencies, such as grit and perseverance, social skills, cognitive skills, and classroom behaviors that make complex, challenging learning worthwhile. Stop being afraid to fail, and start being bold enough to sell your students on their real potential.
Setting Gutsy Goals
Growing up in the digital generation, most students feel like anything they need to know is just a quick Google search away. The gratification is split-second fast. However, becoming a good learner requires the capacity to dig deeply into a topic, which requires having persistence, thinking about it, clarifying it, analyzing it, and developing a complex, yet clear, understanding. This is hard work, and most students don’t know how to do it. Yet, in higher-performing urban schools, the deeper, mastery learning is a key part of the solution (Johnson et al., 2014). To truly have a consistent achievement mindset, you must have something special worth doing.
In your classroom, student goals should produce something of value—something that is personally or culturally relevant—and be part of something bigger than themselves. Second, the goal must have specificity for a big impact (0.94 effect size; Marzano, 1998). Third, you must tell students why they can believe in you and the goals you have set for them. Finally, you’ll need to set micro goals (see page 48) so they can get concrete evidence that the gutsy goals are happening.
Let’s say that last year a teacher had 50 percent of her students reach proficiency in mathematics. I have heard those teachers set what seems like lofty new goals for class like, “At least 80 percent of my students will be proficient in mathematics, and 20 percent or more will get to mastery level.” These might be higher goals than you’ve ever had before, but sorry, they are not gutsy goals. Here’s a gutsy goal: “My first-grade students will read, write, do mathematics, and behave so that by the end of the year, they are ready for third grade, not second.” This goal makes two years of gains with your students, and it is achievable.
Remember, if you work in a school with high-poverty students, getting one and a half to three years of academic progress per year is basic progress. Make your own goals jaw-dropping, amazing, and unlikely (but possible) to reach. If you’re a secondary teacher, let your secondary students know about the gutsy goals you have for them so they fully understand what they need to achieve. Likewise, help your students to set their own gutsy goals. Here are three examples of different types of goals you or your students might have at different education levels.
• An elementary result goal: “My second-grade students will read, write, do mathematics, and behave so that by the end of the year, they are ready for fourth grade, not third.”
• A secondary process goal: One science teacher’s goal might be, “I will teach my students how to rebuild a city from scratch when disaster strikes.” One middle school English teacher might ask her students to write a paper to change the world. Their final papers could be read to community leaders, and the feedback would be life changing. A mathematics teacher’s goal might be, “My students will write a handbook of tips for ‘How to succeed in math,’ during the last month of the semester.”
• A student relational goal: “I will know every other student in class by first name.” Or, “I will initiate three new
