Last summer, I set some pretty crazy goals.  I was going to learn everything and do everything in 10 weeks.  It didn’t quite work out like that.  There’s a school of thought that setting audacious goals is always good, even if you don’t achieve them.  Dreaming big, that thinking tells us, is always positive.  But what if you end up unfocused, trying too much, and not achieving much?  There’s a balance.  I know, I know, that’s such a trite and obvious way to respond to this.  But how easy is it to practice that balance, to set goals that would be meaningful if you achieved them, without going too far?

Let’s be more specific.

I’ve been working on my Spanish for about five years, really.  It started with trying to use Rosetta Stone.  That helped a bunch.  But I didn’t become a native speaker in a month, like I thought I would.  I spent another year moving through the levels, until I reached level 5.  By that time, I had started a notebook of useful phrases and made about 100 flashcards.  I’d started listening to the CD’s in the car a little, and I was understanding snippets of conversation from students and teachers (since so many of my students speak Spanish) that would have been unintelligible to me before.  It was working.

So I set the goal of being able to talk to Spanish-speaking parents, in Spanish.  That’s a big step, and there are significant risks.  No one wants to look stupid, but what about the chance of looking patronizing or offensive?  I worked on my Spanish, but I backed away from that goal pretty quick when school started in the fall.  It was just too risky.

Another goal was to write my own apps for the Android operating system.  I had started learning HTML, and I was planning to help another teacher run an after-school Tech Club.  I thought these things would help motivate and enable me to take this leap.  Of course, it didn’t happen.  Most Android apps are written in Java, a difficult language for an entry-level programmer (like me) to learn.  I started learning Python with my son, as I’ve written about before, but that’s not immediately applicable to the goal of writing programs for my Android phone.  (Of course, I’m not saying that I regret learning Python.  It just didn’t fit the goal.)

So we’re back to another approaching summer, and I’m thinking about what I want to accomplish.  I think my goals will be similar, but more focused on being achievable.  And, I think, that makes all the difference.  It will also help that I’m going to limit the number of goals.

Here we go:

1. Read 50 books this summer, by Labor Day.  (I did this two summers ago.  It sounds like a lot, but it’s about 5 books a week – not impossible.)
2. Exercise three times a week, lose some weight (10 pounds), and run in three different 5K races.  (I just ran in a 2.62 mile race, and I’m planning to run in a 5K in June and July.  I just need to find a race for August.)
3. Finish and start shopping for an agent/publisher for my YA fiction book (working on it for more than two years now), and write a brief nonfiction book about teaching writing in middle school, offered for free download on Amazon and as a PDF on my website.
4. Finish the Codecademy courses on Python and Javascript, and finish two or more courses about programming on Coursera, EdX, or Khan Academy.  Then start writing programs and games for my classroom.
5. Revise and re-imagine my presentation about “creative science writing” for the Illinois Reading Council Conference in October.  (I presented on this topic in February, but it could use some more material and some sample student writing.)
6. Practice Spanish every day, with the programs and books that I have.  Practice speaking Spanish with my summer school students as often as reasonably possible.  Look for a Spanish Conversation class that I can take in the fall that will help me feel more comfortable talking to people in Spanish.

I think that’s enough for now, don’t you?