Reimagining Self
Act now to reimagine education!
Imagine if every student leveraged their strengths, instead of only a few succeeding. Think about how you can
support your teacher to ensure every student gets an excellent education!
Here’s how you can start! Below you will find stories, learnings and exact steps you can try out to achieve what
these kids and educators did. Click on the resource that you'd like to learn and get started.
Let’s reimagine education together!
Goal Setting
How can you define excellence and success?
Goals are not set because they are easy but because they are difficult to achieve. It helps challenge us and the people we work with and for. Goal setting is like designing a road map towards success; it helps us dream big not only for ourselves, but also for the people around us. Setting goals keep us motivated to work towards our vision of excellence, all while building powerful habits and understanding what is important.
"Goal setting has played a major role in my self development and journey with KER. One of my most important learnings from setting goals is that it takes time. At first when I set goals, I could not achieve all of them, but slowly over a period of time I understood how realistic they need to be and how other factors play in. I learned that it is an evolving process. It has helped me in planning my day better and being more efficient and productive. I think setting goals is important for everyone, students and educators alike. This process makes you aware of the effort and time you need to put in. I believe that just setting goals is not as important as our commitment to evolve and the effort we put in for our own growth."
RAGHAVENDRA YADAV
We will be guiding you through the most promising tool for setting your goals called ‘S.M.A.R.T. Goals’. Think about the shifts you want to make in a year. These shifts are where your goals will come from. Some categories you can use to divide your goals are:
Personal goals
Professional goals
Academic goals
Lifestyle goals
We will be guided by one of the goals that Raghavendra set for himself. He wanted to leverage student leadership for change and to make this into a goal he used the S.M.A.R.T tool. While writing the goals down, you have to ensure that they satisfy each of the following categories -
Specific - The more specific the goal, the greater clarity we have on what we need to work towards. Answering the following questions would help you to make sure that it is very clear:
What exactly do you want to achieve?
Who is involved in your goal and process?
What do you want to do?
For example, Raghavendra wanted to leverage leadership qualities in 20 more student leaders.
Measurable - This tells us what we should see, hear, and feel when we meet our goal. The following can help you make your goal measurable -
How will you know that you have met your goal?
What will tell you that you have met your goal?
You can use any unit depending on your goal, for example, percent (%), kilometers (km), grams (gm), etc.
For example, Raghavendra believed that his goal would have been met if 20 student leaders would leverage at least 3 of the 8 Cs to start their own projects with a long-term vision for change.
Attainable - If the goal is too easy you won’t be motivated to achieve it. If the goal is too hard, you are likely to get demotivated easily and early. But your goals need to be such that they can be achieved if we have put the required effort in. Is it possible to achieve your goal if you put in the required time and effort?
If the answer is yes, then your goal is attainable.
If the answer is no, then please make your goal more attainable (which could mean easier or more challenging)
For example, Raghavendra could support 5 students over every 3 months which means 20 student leaders would be supported through a year. Hence, it is attainable.
Relevant - A relevant goal is a goal that you need and want. To make your goals relevant, answering the following questions can help you -
Do you need to meet this goal?
Will focusing your time and energy on this goal create a change for you?
If the answer to the above questions are yes, then your goal is relevant. However, if the answer is no then please change it to make it more relevant.
For example, Raghavendra will get to work with one to two student leaders every month to meet his goal that will lead to multiple ripples of change. The goal is very relevant.
Time-bound - Setting a goal with a certain time-frame holds us accountable to the goal. Our deadlines need to be ambitious but realistic. Remember to keep this amount of time short enough to motivate you but long enough to allow you to be successful.
For example, Raghavendra set a deadline for himself to support and leverage 20 student leaders in a goal,
Hence his final goal is as follows -
20 student leaders will leverage at least 3 of the 8 Cs to start their own projects with a long-term vision for change by 31st December 2021.
How has goal-setting helped you?
Backward Planning
Plan your way to success
To be a changemaker that leaves impact, one needs to build a strong plan of action that will mark a clear path to achieve their goals. This resource is a step by step process of how to make a strong plan using a process called GAPCA (Goal, Assessment, Plan, Checkpoints, and Adaptable)
Meet Huda Sultana, an 11th grader from Hyderabad. She was part of a 6-week long internship where she used the LDJ Reflection Tool as she learned and grew with her friends. She was on a journey to explore what her own authentic leadership was and how she could leverage it to bring change in education in her school and community. Huda started using a journal for planning as she realized that her days were largely unorganized and unproductive. She thought that the only way for her to make the best use of her time is using a journal to set goals, make a plan and track her progress.
Huda says it has helped her grow by making her more punctual with work and submissions. At the same time, it has helped her improve the quality of her work by making her more focused and productive. She feels it has helped her sharpen her strength of ‘Consciousness’ as she practiced reflection every day. Just a record of days, activities and the amount of time being spent on different tasks made it easier for her to understand and reflect on how she was managing her time.
Take a look below on how she planned and tracked her time.
