We were recently trained on how to write WIGS or Wildly Important Goals. Our P wants us to develop a personal WIG, share it with students, post it in the classroom and allow students to be our accountability partner. In other words, the students will check on their teachers to make sure they are meeting this personal goal. The P will visit each classroom to look for the WIG and plans to question the children about how they will check on the teacher.
I "don’t wanna". I don’t believe children should be making me accountable for my personal goal. This makes me very uncomfortable.
I agree with you. Kids have too much over us as it is already and they unfortunately have too much power and no accountability in so many areas. Are you the only teacher in your school who's opposed to this? If not, get together and speak up. Is there a UFT person, chapter leader or s/o like that who can be your voice?
It would be okay to share a goal with your students and tell them how you plan on meeting it...but that's it.. They should not be checking up on you for anything.
Personally, I would be passive aggressive about my goal . I would write something like “ I will drink 2 cups of coffee each day” or “I will only lose my coffee cup 3x in one day”.
You can always write a very basic goal. “I will drink 2 bottles of water each day”. Have a weekly tally board that the kids can mark when you finish one. Play the game but not too hard.
Oh hell no. This upsets me so much I didn’t even bother with symbols for the curse word. First of all, goals should be individual and PRIVATE. No one, child or adult needs to know my goals unless they are tied to my evaluation and then only admin should be informed.
What a stupid, useless idea.
If I HAD to do it, I would be the snarky teacher with this goal “I will make it out alive.”
I will beat zero children today.
I will keep my mouth shut about stupid ideas from admin.
I will not go to jail or get myself on the evening news over my job.
I will enjoy a mental health day once a month.
Goals ideas to get you by:
1. I will give each student the grade you have earned
2. I will assigned homework more than once each week.
3. We will have more pop up quizzes
4. I will find more challenging activities
5. I will not listen to tattle tellers
6. I will meet with one parent every two weeks
7. We will read 30 pages every two weeks
8. I will invite your parents to class every week
9. We will practice the EOCs every day
10. We will decrease bathroom visits
11. We will eliminate useless parties
I am sorry that you have to go through this. I imagine how devalued you feel at this moment. This is really an insult to teachers every where. Our degrees really mean nothing.
So we are currently implementing WIGS and lead measures with our kids.
We were also supposed to create a personal WIG and then a class WIG. I just did a class WIG for all of the reasons that the previous posters mentioned.
Our class WIG was:
We will cut down our transition time to 2 minutes by (insert date).
I did have the kids give me their ideas for our lead measures, but the idea here is that kids get used to the language and tracking. They don't need my personal goal to learn the language...they can learn it while we're working on the class WIG. I made a point to have the "scoreboard" up and current so at least my admins could see that we were working on A goal...just not my goal.
And when we rolled out leadership notebooks in January, the kids knew the language. Doing a "practice WIG" for two weeks was all that was needed for them to get it.
That scores administrators PR points, but, echoing what others have already said, it just sends the message to the kids that we're no different than them, that we're equals, not authority figures. It doesn't do this in an overt or malicious way, but it sends a message nonetheless. Kids already have way too many of these messages from the school system, and it just feeds the beast of entitlement and chips away at our authority.
Mmmmm..................... WIGS is a new term for me.
I do have some questions.
Has your P posted his/her WIG in the staff room?
Have the teachers devised an plan for monitoring the P's accountability to his/her personal WIG?
Are the teachers to report their findings to the Superintendent? Parents? Students? Or perhaps all of the above.
Just curious.
Some things just make you want to close your classroom door and teach.
ETA: we were posting at the same time. I see P has not posted personal WIG. My parents always taught me "to lead by example." Guess your P missed this life lesson.
And children shouldn't be put in the position of holding an adult accountable. If I HAD to participate, I would pick something I do every day already or something that WASN'T personal to me, like, "Drink one bottle of water every day" or "Put my planner in my purse so I don't leave it at school by accident".
If I had to do it and felt like I needed to, this sounds like the perfect answer.
Quote:
Our class WIG was:
We will cut down our transition time to 2 minutes by (insert date).
Learning lesson for a good goal that actually helps the class. I can't imagine how a p could do anything against you. Try writing me up for not posting a personal goal. How ridiculous to even "require."
We had to make a personal goal last year, then post a QR code link to it outside our classroom. So anyone in the building could access it. Including parents.
I never posted a goal. No one ever asked me about it.
1. I will not set goals.
2. I will read every day.
3. I will not take home papers to grade.
4. I will not come in early to set my classroom up each summer.
5. I will not work beyond my contract time.
6. I will not spend my personal money on my room or students.
Good Lord! Just when you think you have heard it all!
This sounds like it is part of all of that growth mindset philosophy that seems to be the buzzword in education these days. If the principal is truly going to check on each teacher, I would pick my battles and have something. I would have a generic goal like, "I will try to read every day." I always like to talk about books with kids, so that would be no hardship, and it certainly doesn't go into my personal life.
I am glad I am retired now, though. "I don't wanna" seems to be how I feel about most of these new ideas. And once again, I bet most of us have/had goals for our students, and have them develop goals for themselves in subjects such as reading or personally, but now, everyone has to conform to a certain way of doing it. I was so sick of the endless, so-called professional development that just seemed to add things and requirements for the day.
NJ Teacher expresses my feelings exactly. So happy to be done with that kind of nonsense. If you must pick a goal, make it something you already do, like read every day or plan lessons every day. Wouldn’t it be nice just to teach?
It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in my opinion about this.
I won’t be at school when P goes through to check personal WIGs on Friday. Lucky me! I’ll check with my colleagues on Monday to hear how it went.
We posted our class Reading WIG that we’ve been pursuing since the beginning of the trimester. Maybe this will make P so happy that she’ll forget about the teacher one.
We did the same thing since August: class WIG every month, personal for me every month, and the kids pick one for every few months. It's been pretty fun and to be honest, kept me on track. I picked things such as : will wake up before work to work out (hence strategies are no tech after 9 etc), or to drink more water. Things like that are actually fun for the kids and they enjoy keeping me accountable. The class WIGs are a bit harder to achieve but they've been trying to work as a team more frequently. So I don't know, I'm not in the majority here: I actually think it's been a good thing for my class!
This was probably presented to your principal (or your principal's boss) as a great idea. It sounds like a recent fad, and like many fads in education, it will probably be dumped in a year or two.
In the meantime, here's a way you can play along that will probably please your principal. Your goal can be to inform your students how the subject, skills, or lessons you're presenting can benefit them in their adult lives or in future careers. I know there are bulletin board posters out there that show a wide range of skills taught in school and illustrate how these skills can be used in future careers. Perhaps you could post one of these posters next to your goal, and discuss it for a couple minutes before you start a lesson.
I think your principal will love it, and I don't think it will be too difficult to do.
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01-29-2019, 05:22 PM
. I would write something like “ I will drink 2 cups of coffee each day” or “I will only lose my coffee cup 3x in one day”. 
