Elementary school teachers using Responsive Classroom® practices take time at the beginning of the school year to have students identify their learning “hopes and dreams” for the academic year ahead. Many combine this activity with asking parents to identify one or two hopes and dreams that they have for their children in school.

The first parent–teacher conference, which often takes place in November, is an ideal time to revisit these global goals with students and parents and see if they can be narrowed a bit into more specific learning goals being covered in the curriculum.

A focused learning conference with each student before the parent—teacher conference can help every young learner first review their initial hopes and dreams and then identify the academic area they see as their strength and articulate a specific learning goal for the next few weeks. Then they can set a similar goal for an area they may be struggling with.

If a second grader’s hope and dream poster shows her working at her desk with numbers floating overhead and the words “I want to get better at math”, this area might be a strength of hers. Now she might say, “I want to learn to do harder subtraction problems.”

If a fourth grader’s hopes and dreams said, “I need to get better at spelling,” this may be a difficult skill for the child. The teacher can show him his most commonly misspelled words and the student can decide how many of these to try to master before the December break. “I am going to learn my fifteen hardest words before New Year’s Day!” might be one of their focused goals.

At the parent—teacher conference, the teacher can share the child’s focused goals with parents as they talk about the child’s work. The teacher can review the parents’ hopes and dreams and ask if they have a sense of a more focused goal for their child in this area.

For instance, if the parent’s initial goal for their child was “for her to have more friends in school,” the teacher can report on who the child seems to enjoy working or playing with at school. A natural goal for the parent might now become “to have Katie invite one of her new school friends over on a weekend.”

If teachers have not asked parents for their hopes and dreams for their children at the beginning of the school year, the parent—teacher conference is an ideal time for this exploratory conversation.

We all have big hopes and dreams, and we can move toward them by setting reasonable, short-term goals that we actually accomplish, helping us to feel stronger for having done so and helping us to accept new challenges in learning.