The start of a new school year can cause many students to feel overwhelmed as they try to manage their school workload.  

Goals Keep Students Motivated:

Staying motivated during the school season can become a difficult task for students with heavy workloads. Mapping out a clear goal-setting strategy will help motivate and inspire students to start working toward achieving their educational goals. Depending on your academic level, set goals that help you understand how to improve your skillset to motivate your focus and productivity to achieve long-term success.  

Goal Setting Strategies

Setting goals for the school year can help lead students to long-term success. According to psychological studies, you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. Writing out your goals will help identify what you want to achieve and engage your brain to prioritize that goal to achieve it faster. Developing a written goal-setting strategy early into the school year will help to identify your focus and improve your academic performance. When setting goals for the school year, you must develop strategies to achieve them in a way that works for you. But, how do you set the right educational goals that are realistic?

It’s important to make sure each educational goal you are intending to achieve has a measurable objective with the necessary steps to achieve success. A commonly used goal-setting strategy among students involves developing SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.

SMART Goals:

  • (S) – Specific: What do you want to accomplish during the school year? Be as specific as possible about the goal you want to achieve.
  • (M) – Measurable: What data will be used to measure the educational goal? Identify the data and metrics that will be measured to determine if you achieve the goal.
  • (A) – Achievable: Do you have the necessary skills and knowledge to accomplish the goal? Focus on how you can make the goal attainable based on your academic level.
  • (R) – Relevant: How does the goal align with your academic values and long-term goals? Identify how this goal will help you achieve your long-term goals in the future.
  • (T) – Time-Based: What is the timeframe for your set goal? Creating a deadline for a goal can increase motivation while helping set a realistic time frame.

This framework helps to identify, track, and plan the steps students need to take in setting realistic educational goals to keep them motivated throughout the school year.

Goals for Student Success: 

Planning out goals before the start of the new school year can help to improve your focus, productivity, and motivation. Identifying what you want to achieve while utilizing the SMART goal framework, will help to make your goals more tangible. Goals that can help lead to student success can include: 

  • Maintaining or improving your GPA
  • Establish a consistent schedule to help manage time
  • Adhere to project/homework deadlines
  • Participate in an extracurricular activity or club
  • Improve one grade level in a class
  • Prepare to study for the SAT or ACT
  • Limit screen time