One-on-one conferences: Individual Goal Setting

Objective:

Establish a strong interpersonal bond with each advisee, gather important information about their aspirations, self-image, home and social contexts, and academic profile.

Activity:

During the early part of first semester, create an opportunity to meet one-on-one with each of your advisees. This can be difficult if you are leading the group by yourself (as it usually the case), however you can give the students ownership of various challenges, letting the group manage itself while you conduct conferences.

The structure of the conference can be quite flexible. I like to take notes on each kid, and then compile the information I collected in a spreadsheet.

This year, I used the following discussion prompts, which take about 15 minutes to do justice:

1) Explain that the purpose of the meeting is for you, their advisor, to get a better sense of the students strengths, challenges so that you can help them formulate and reach specific goals this semester.

2) Start with strengths. "What are you good at? It can be school-related or not. What do you think you're pretty strong at?" Once they have given a response, ask some follow up questions. Ask for another strength. "How about in the way you interact with other people? What is your strength there?"

3) Move to challenges. "What are the things that challenge you most in school?" Again, ask follow up questions. Ask for examples. Usually the student will speak of a particular class in which they have learning anxieties. This is rich stuff. "What about outside of school? What challenges do you face?" ..."What about in your interactions with people?" These can elicit important information about the student's self esteem and home life. Again, critical info for an advisor.

4) Now get down to business. You want to build goals using the strengths and challenges. Make at least one goal around pushing the student to take advantage of an identified strength. This could be a career-related connection, or getting the student to try to do more independent work, writing, art, etc. getting involved in a club, etc. Have another goal be around a challenge. If the challenge is academic, ask the student to set a grade-specific goal...and commit to seeking our tutoring to get there. If the challenge is social, have the student commit to taking on opportunities that push them in a specific way.

Write everything down for future reference, and check in both formally and informally with the student, using the goals as a quick reference point.

These conversations can be an especially important point of departure and return when handling academic and social interventions later in your relationship with the student.