Professional Goal Setting in Early Childhood Education

It is almost January again and a great time to reflect on what you want to accomplish in the coming year as an early childhood professional.

Why set professional goals?

Professional goals support our long-term happiness and job satisfaction and are different from New Year’s resolutions, which often fade by the end of January. Professional goals focus on growth. When we set professional goals, we move forward in who we want to be as early childhood educators.  

I created an outline of my professional goal-setting system to support my professional goal-setting process.

I start with an overarching theme for the year. Through experience, I have learned that creating a theme provides direction for my goals while allowing for flexibility as the year progresses.  

I start my theme-setting process by asking myself, “Do I want to focus on a skill set, explore a theory, or something else?” I try to focus my theme on something that will hold my interest for a year. When thinking about my theme, I work hard to ensure it is a big idea that allows for many possibilities.

One year my theme was “Building Professional Visibility in ECE Communities.” Some other examples of past themes are, “Building Classroom Communities,” “Growing My Leadership,” “Environments as our Professional Calling Cards,” and “What does it Means to be an Early Childhood Professional?”

My theme for this year is “The Emotional Lives of Early Childhood Educators.” I decided on this theme because it aligns with my work. I have a long-term interest in early childhood educators’ experiences and the impact of the emotional labor needed to work as an early childhood professional.

Once I have decided on a theme, I think about my goals for the year. Goals are specific and measurable and come with a list of activities that you check off to document progress towards your goals. I always start professional goal setting by asking a series of questions.

What is it that I want to learn through the exploration of my theme?

What materials, resources, skills, or knowledge will I need to help my journey?

How do I hope to be changed while learning about my theme? 

After I take some time to answer my questions, I decide on the big ideas that will become my goals for the year.

For example, based on this year’s theme, “The Emotional Lives of Early Childhood Educators,” I may want to document early childhood educator stories. To do this work, I will need to set some specific activities to break down my goal to learn from early childhood educators’ stories in particular ways.

Each activity is a part of my larger goal, so thinking about the details would include items like developing a strategy for collecting stories and determining what equipment I might need to do the work.

As I work on my goals throughout the year, I notice what tasks need attention and add new details for each activity to help me document stories and fit into my overarching theme of understanding the emotional lives of early childhood educators.

Are you ready to write your goals?

Start by thinking about your theme that can engage you for a whole year.

Next, ask yourself the questions – “What is it that I want to learn through exploring my theme? What materials, resources, skills, and knowledge will I need to help my journey? How do I hope to be changed through learning about my theme?”

Then write your goals for the year – using specific actions that you can break down into activities. Take time to focus, ensuring you can measure what you write – the “who, what, how, when, and why.” Use specific, measurable actions to plan your activities.

Your activities flow from your goal, expanding on the “who, what, how, when, and why.” If you have problems creating activities, your plan may not be specific enough.

Some Tips for Goal Setting

Your goals should reflect the time that you can realistically spend. Generally, one or two hours a week is a reasonable estimate, and one or two activity goals each month work well.

Check your progress against your goals every month, and place your plan and goals somewhere you will see them regularly. For example, I put a reminder on my calendar to check my progress each month.

While many more details go into my plan, you get the idea. If you spend a few hours a week reading a book each month, reflect on what you read as a realistic activity.

In December of this year or early January of the following year, I will come back and see my progress towards my goals and reflect on my learning and how it changed me as a professional. Then, I will use the reflections to think about plans for the following year.

What professional goal might you set for yourself this coming year?