Ep 88 | Seriously - How Do You Set Goals for Kids?

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Failure is such an important part of that process because you find out what works and what doesn't. One of one of the things that I encourage my parents to do is if a student forgets a lunchbox or they forget their homework, it's like, well, let them have that natural consequence. You know, we got the deduction in grade, or I have to eat lunch from the cafeteria today. And it's nothing that's going to harm them. You know, it's a point or two. And we learned from that. Then, okay, so then we can set, okay, when I come to that afternoon, we come home and it's like, okay, what can, all right, how do we fix this? How can we do it? So let's set a goal for goal for making sure we have everything we need for every day. It could be in the form of a checklist, a visual checklist. I always think that's a fantastic thing, having that visual checklist for students. We had those sort of things I had for my boys when they were growing up. We for their chores. It was a checklist.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. Kids, they're a mystery. One day you can't get them to sit still, the next day you can't get them out of bed. Some homework is a breeze, other homework comes with tantrums. If you're a parent, you're likely familiar with the regular cast of motivational characters, screen time, candy, friends, etc. But what is the best way to goal set with kids who are more focused on learning the latest TikTok dance than getting good grades? My next guest knows a thing or two about both kids and goals. He's the principal at NB Cook Elementary School, a father himself, and someone who has achieved admirable fitness milestones. Today he's going to share insight into the most effective ways to set goals with your kids as we talk success, failure, and the steps in between. Security Forces to Schoolhouse Principal, Pensacola High School graduate, and all in for kids, Mr. Larry Knight. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

You're welcome. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Kids are a mystery.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Yes, they are.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

And an exhausting mystery sometimes too. I feel for you parents sometimes. Yeah, and parents want to make you know future community members, right? That's the goal when you're raising tiny humans in every area of life. But, you know, parents are stretched a little thin too, which is why we're here to hopefully offer some support, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

So can we talk goal setting don'ts first? Like what are some of the biggest mistakes that maybe you've made as a parent or you see being made by parents when it comes to goal setting with their kids?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

I think some of the mistakes that people make are, first of all, is not letting them be a part of the process in that in making goals because they need to own be able to own those goals. Now, there are some things sometimes that we're gonna have to say this is a goal that we have to have, but it's gonna be more effective if the child actually takes ownership in that and they want to be a part of that, let them see what that goal is. I can think of a example here for myself of letting someone actually pointed out a goal to me, then inadvertently, but about it was seven years ago, I guess it was, when I first came to NB Cook. And she's going to she she'll probably won't be happy to tell I share this story because she feels bad about it. But I was, it was, I was disappointed to NB Cook as principal, and I stopped by the school to meet my new staff. Uh it was in the summer, stopped by to meet my office staff, and they were very, very welcoming. And the PTA president was there, and this was a PTA president at the time. So they wanted to give me a gift, welcome me, said, Hey, how about uh we get you a a shirt, a t-shirt for one of our t-shirts for the school? I said, That'd be great. And see, I looked at me. See, what are you uh three X?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Oh, oh no.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Yeah, yes, which I was not, by the way, a 3X. It was a two, but it's not a great so I I remember that that evening, I'm like, okay. All right, Mr. Knight, you've got to do something about this. You said your your weight has gotten out of control. And that was kind of the catalyst for me to kind of start that weight loss goal. And that's actually started that summer of uh step of making my first steps into that. Because sometimes, sometimes, like I said, what my point was that sometimes someone needs to guide you to that goal to let you see that. Now, perhaps not like that, and she didn't intend to, but but you can guide them to those goals. Like with your children, report card comes home and you look at this report card, and it is not what you would like for to see. And I'm sure if it's bad grace, it's not something they want to see as well, and letting them see that okay, there's this might be a problem here, so what are we going to do about this? So, again, that's so that's kind of one of the mistakes because like I said, having that ownership in that, if if someone else had told me that, or you know, me had the doctor said it, or whoever had said it, might not have meant so much to me as me realizing it for myself there, but was kind of guided there.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

And well, let me interrupt you really quick because I have a follow-up question. How do you as a parent find balance between letting your kid take ownership of their goals and making sure those goals are supporting them becoming good future community members? You know, because I can just see a kid going, My goal is to beat the next level on Fortnite. And you're like, hmm, okay, Johnny.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

That's that's what well, see here, and that's where you can give them some options here of, well, okay, here's an academic goal we can make for ourselves. What personal goals? That's part of the thing. When whenever I'm setting goals, I mean, and I just like probably most probably everyone, I come December 31st, I started making those new years, New Year's resolutions. I do, I've done it with my boys when they're little. We would sit down and write our goals down for our new year for our New Year's resolutions. So as you're coming up with those goals, I do a fitness goal every year. I do a spiritual goal of where I want to where I want to be there, and I also do kind of a personal goal. And last year, though this year it's it's about reading. I want to read at least one book for pleasure a month, things like that. So with your children, having those sort of things as well. Okay, well, tell me a goal for school. Let's look at its report card here. What's an academic goal we can do here? What's a personal goal? Maybe it's you know, you want to get better at Fortnite, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Okay, so that could be a personal goal.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

I like the idea of having the different buckets of goals instead of a parent going, oh no, that's incorrect. You know, going, oh, that's great. And it's like that improv game, yes, and right. You know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, yes, that's great, little Johnny. And we get to set a spiritual goal and an academic goal or and a fitness goal or whatever your buckets are. Okay, here's my next question is how do you as a parent decide how much of your personal goal setting process you let your kid in on? Because you just shared you have this beautiful New Year's ritual with your kiddos, and you have, you know, your military and achieved some fantastic milestones fitness-wise, like I alluded to in the intro. But there are ups and downs in that process. And certainly every adult has some measure of financial goals, right? Right. So, how much of that do you suggest letting your kids in on in your process so that they can have what's the saying? Do as I see, not as I Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Do as well as they do as do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying. Some people do that, but but in reverse. That's what we want, of course. We want to do as I do. Do as I do, exactly. And they will. That's what they they do what they do what we do. And that's an important thing to remember as we are, as we're setting those goals. And there, and I'm a firm believer, you know, there are kid things and there are adult things. There are things that are just not appropriate to talk about, you know, just that we shouldn't burden our children with, and particularly, and I'm thinking financial sort of things and family sort of things. But with my fitness journey, I talk about those things at dinner time. And partly it's an accountability piece for me as well when I'm talking about these things. And one of the things, and I'm probably getting a little ahead here, but but accountability being such a big part of goal setting is something that we uh definitely, definitely need to make sure there's a part of. And part of my accountability is one of the things I do is I I post on Instagram. It's kind of one of the things, and I talk about it on the my morning news show with the kids. I kind of talk about some of the some of the things. Right now, I'm on a goal here because right now I've I've run every day for the last three, I guess. I guess I'm currently at 1,418 days.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

That I've run every single day. And come April 19th will be four years that I've run every single day. So my goal right now is to make it to those four, make it to four to the four-year mark. And so I talk about that to the students on my on the morning news show and kind of just making sure I don't give a last night. I did not uh because last night was one of those days I did not want to go do it. It was late. That's right. I didn't make it until 10 o'clock last night. Oh my gosh. My son, my youngest son came into town. We're visiting and talking and everything, and then he's getting ready to go to bed. And and I'm looking, and I was like, I looked at my watch, rings has not been closed, and then I was like, oh my gosh, are you really gonna do this at 10 o'clock?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

So and you did it?

SPEAKER_02 9:28

But I did it. Went out and did it because that is my goal every single day to run. So and I and I did it.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Wow, you really are the perfect person for this subject matter.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

It's kind of one of one of those things with with goals is putting aside the excuses as well. That was one of my things. Well, I goals was setting aside no excuses whatsoever. It's it's it's going to get done.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Okay, so tell me about the morning show. Is that with your school?

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Yes, that's with my school. Every morning, well, on uh I'm on the see on we have uh uh a morning news show that's run by our fifth grade students, and and I come on, or my assistant Prince Wara Guidance Counselor, I'm on Mondays and Fridays during the week, and so I start off, I start off their week and I end their week. So I start off a lot of time. This this second half of the year, one of the things I've been talking about a lot with the students is goal setting, actually. Uh we started in, you know, we started in uh January. We came back after the new year and talking about goals for the new year, and I've talked about report cards coming out and talked about personal things that they may want to achieve and and setting those goals. And so that because part of that, again, back to that accountability or keeping it fresh on their minds, I talk about that each week just to make sure, because I don't know if it's something that they have actually gone home and talked about with their parents and setting, but for me, that's kind of my kind of account helping them to be accountable, but reminding them, hey, we made some goals back in January. How are you doing with those? Do you need to reset? Do you need to change your goals? Do you need to do something a little different? Or you know, do you have any failures? What are your successes? That sort of thing that I'll talk to them about on the news.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

I've never thought of accountability as top of mind awareness. It always sounded like policing to me. You know, we're keeping you accountable. It's like Santa's watching, you know, wasn't whatn't a fun thing. Yes. But accountability can go hand in hand with encouragement. So I like that that twist on it. And you said something about, hey, have you had any failures? So talk to me about failures. How do you help kids with failure? Is that an important part of the process? I think there's a temptation to want to rescue kids.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Absolutely, there is. Failure is such an important part of that process because you find out what works and what doesn't. One is one of the things that I encourage my parents to do is if a student forgets a lunchbox or they forget their homework, it's like, well, let them have that natural consequence. You know, we got the deduction in grade, or I have to eat lunch from the cafeteria today, and it's nothing that's going to harm them. You know, it's a point or two. And we learned from that. And okay, so then we can set, okay, when I come to that afternoon, we come home, and it's like, okay, what can, all right, how do we fix this? How can we do it? So let's set a goal for goal for making sure we have everything we need for every day. It could be in the form of a checklist, a visual checklist. I always think that's a fantastic thing, having that visual checklist for students. We had those sort of things I had for my boys when they were growing up. We for their chores, it was a checklist every day, Monday through Friday. They had what we needed to do from you know, from start of the day, making our bed through the end of the day, brushing our teeth. That last thing on that list that we've that we had there that was a checklist, and it was uh on vis-a-vis, it's uh laminated, and so they every day we could do that sort of thing. But those were their daily goals. But again, but not rescuing them for because they we learned in that process, okay, what didn't work for me today. Maybe it was this morning I got out of, I got out of my routine. This morning I got distracted because I don't know, my little brother was was bugging me and I got distracted. It's always the little brother. Or always that little brother. Those sort of things, and it kind of helps us to reset and we learn a valuable lesson than that. And again, I guess it uh and part of that being sometimes what doesn't work, or maybe I need to make sure I stick to and we we we learn the importance of that routine of not stepping out of that. Because sometimes, you know, we get into we think about sometimes we we do everything so routinely sometimes, and sometimes we think, gosh, okay, I want to do something a little different today. And so, and sometimes we figure out that that's not always the best thing. There's some things that there must be a routine. Our teachers at school they do a great job of helping our students goal setting. One of the things that when they walk in, there's a routine. We walk in when I walk into the classroom. Some of uh the ones who are very successful in helping children are there's a checklist when they walk in that's uh on the board. There's okay, first thing, uh unload your backpack, second thing, sharpen your pencils, third thing, those sort of things, helping children though, and those are things as well that's helping that help students to make a little to make goals for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

You mentioned chores, and and for students that are not the type A personality that just love a good checklist, like I'm a I'm a checklist girl, like I just love crossing things off, or you know, I like my colored pins and my check marks, and I'm all about that life, but not everyone is. So is there a right and a wrong way to do bribery as a parent when it comes to your kids' goals?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Some people don't, that checklist doesn't work for them at all. So we have to find ways to do it. And some of it may be I've got to check in with them more often with this. I'm a wife and I just recently adopted a adopt a little girl, and she's a lot different than my five boys are raised. It's a whole lot different there how we are needing to work with her with things. She is a one that it's it's it's requiring a lot of reminders about different things, even though it's written down, she doesn't like to go back and look at this list and everything. So we're helping her to get into routine. So it may be it may be some work up front for on the parents, it's kind of finding that that way of what works for them, but not making it punitive because we want them to enjoy the process. Because and again, I think I'm probably gonna divert off to jump it in some places, but goal setting. I mean, it is such an important part of just our lives, period. This is something a skill that they're going to use forever. It's a skill that we need, they're gonna need in middle school, high school, gonna lead in the workforce, they're gonna need in their personal lives, those sort of things, a skill that we we have to help them get right because it will help them to have such a more successful future. I was kind of looking at some of the things it was stated that only 3% is of the population set goals. Only 3% of people set goals. And of that 3%, only 1% of them actually write those goals down. And that's kind of a key thing with this as well, is writing those goals or writing your goals down because you have something to refer back to as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

I I was surprised by that stat statistic that only 3% set goals because I grew up in a very goal-setting household. But I love the the contrast that you have five kiddos that you you and your wife have, and then now you adopted a kiddo, and she is 11, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

How long ago did you adopt her?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

About a year. Yeah, about a year now. April, oh, about a year ago.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Okay, so I think that's such a great illustration that parents who maybe didn't, you know, haven't had this habit of goal setting with their kids that it's not too late because you weren't, you know, I assume you weren't in the 11-year-old's life prior to that, you know. And so, and now you are, and you're kind of starting from scratch, but a little later in the game.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Right? Right. So, but it's it's possible.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

So I it's definitely it is definitely possible to start starting later. I mean, me myself here, yeah, is is I mean, I think a testament to that as well. And, you know, like I said, I start got started on my weight on my fitness journey seven years ago is when I started to. So I am, you know, at the time, 40 something, I guess at the time, I think 48, 49, or whenever, when I finally got started with running and and doing things. So it's never then setting those goals. So even now today, I kind of I have to still experiment with some of those things with goal setting. And and again, back that accountability piece that I've talked about of having that, because even even as adults, I think we still need that accountability that we're talking about that I've talked about with children. Sometimes I think I get a little annoyed with it when it comes to work.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

And so my boss is probably gonna hear this, but she learns all kinds of TA, and I am here for it.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

So they had my boss that asked for a school grade projection. What do you think your school grade's gonna be? Or, you know, in the different in for school grades, there are several different categories that you have. You have proficiency of reading, proficiency in math, learning gains and reading, learning gains and math, that sort of thing. What do you think you're going to be in these different categories? What are your goals here? So I sent that in. They asked for a spreadsheet. I mean, uh, Google Form, I sent that in. And then a little while later, oh, uh, remember those goals you set up? I would like to have a meeting with you to go over those. I'm like, I am 55 years old. Why are we having to come? Why are you coming in and checking in on me about this? But after our meeting and everything, and I really was reflecting about the thing, you know, it's important for, I mean, we get so busy in our lives, and children do as well. They think about all the things that children have that are going on. You know, we've got baseball practice, we've got homework, we've got gymnastics, we've all the things that we do. And as adults, we have to remember we have a lot of those things going on, so but our kids do as well. So that accountability of helping them just goes a long way. For me, when I sat down with her and actually I began looking and we began talking about some of the goals and looking at some about, I began looking at part of it, okay, is this a realistic goal for one of these us looking at here? Because when I look back at, because what one of the things she brought up was, well, your students scored here at this point last year in this area right here. Do you think that's a do you think that's attainable for this upcoming year? That's like, hmm, kind of had me make me rethink some things about, okay, maybe that goal needs to be adjusted there. Like that. So just that accountability piece to say it's not just a did you do this, but also, okay, how's it, how's it going? That sort of thing. That's the thing that's important for all of us to have that.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

The support.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

The support, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Right. Yeah. I do the same thing. I have a terrible habit of going, well, I think, I think this year I'll be president. Yes, yes, that's what I'll do. You know, like just crazy out of left field goals. And I'm like, well, if I can imagine it, it's possible, right? Isn't that if you can dream it, you can do it. But yes, but there are steps. And just like in your weight loss journey, you know, 70 pounds, you said that you lost, which is incredible. That's such an incredible accomplishment. But it wasn't one year that that probably all well, I don't know, was it one year that that all happened?

SPEAKER_02 19:45

It was it was pretty quick. Was it pretty quick? It was about actually it was probably about a year. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

And you had, did you break it down into steps?

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yes, I did. And as far as the goal, the well, the the weight loss itself, I did not, but I knew that I that the whole fitness journey started. So it started in the summer. And at that time I would we would go walking. My wife and I, we would go on pretty much very long walks. I think we would walk five, 10 miles at a time, just go out and do that. When school started, it was okay, I don't have this much. School started back in, I don't have as much time during the day or the afternoons to do this because to do this. So what am I going to do about this? And so I decided, okay, all right, well, you know, if I walk, if I'm generally walking out, because generally we were walking about on on average, we were walking about an hour a day. Weekends were a little longer, but then I was okay, well, you know what? If I ran my runs, if I ran for 30 minutes, then that should probably should equate for to walking for an hour. That's kind of how it started there. So, okay, so I started that and and so I went run for 30 minutes, and all right, we're great here. And then, which then progressed to me running longer and longer times, and then I was like, okay, well, I'll do I run three miles, but that's as far as I'm gonna go because I said anything more than three miles is just silly because I have a car. That's what my standard was. But somehow then I began to challenge myself. I said, you know, I said, I wonder if I could run a 10K. It's like, and I went out and did it. It's like, huh, okay, I did it. And and kind of just snowballed from there. So at that point, so and then I began setting more goals for myself. About at that time I said I started setting distance goals for myself and my way.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

The goal is the activity that supports the goal, or it's like the the sub goal. Right. And then within that, you had fun with these uh smaller milestones. Right. So for for kids, how can parents help their kids celebrate? Like what's an appropriate way to celebrate you reaching a goal? Different than bribery, maybe you know, it's something different, but What's a good way that a parent can do that with their kiddo?

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Okay. Well, of course, the best thing is always it's that natural thing for them. Like with our school, one of the things we we do is we have it's a program called Bean Stack where the students log in their minutes for their reading, and then there's usually some activity or something at the end where, or like we had back in January, there uh it was a snowball fight with with the principal. Oh my gosh, they love it. If they earned a certain number of points, that sort of thing. So they're not sure if you're not with the principal.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

So we have these, uh so we have these sort of things that they're that they're working towards, and they get that they get they have that that goal. They have a they have the surprise, the celebration they're working for. And I think it's important that even then with us, we have those small little celebrations, whether or not it just be a simple, hey, a high five at the dinner table, or it could be, you know, you break it at small once, hey, once you get once we reach this goal, let's do this. Maybe we go out to ice cream, or we go for a we let's we we can spend some, we're spending we're going, it's you and me time. We're going to go and oh quality time. Quality time, absolutely. I don't know again, because the goal for the goal, I think, is to be for those that to be intrinsic for our kids. And so, but a lot of times we do have to start externally at first to help them work there till we get to that ex that intrinsic sort of that intrinsic more motivation they have. So, but sometimes we do have to go with that kind of bribery that you talked about in the in the beginning to kind of get there to help them see that success first. Because sometimes, particularly in now go back to my daughter, you know, that she's comes from a very rough background and not having a lot of success. I mean, academically, she wasn't having a lot of success, things like that. And so when we start, and so until she started really seeing success, that I guess that is kind of a perfect example of uh of this, is that I mean, she was struggling in school. Reading was just, oh my gosh, it was a it was a struggle. Spelling were things doing things for spelling, it was just a struggle for everything. But so but when she started seeing that little success, when she means we had the I mean, I've got a great group of teachers, and she started seeing this little success, it was just her eyes light up and she wanted to do more because I saw a success. I started beginning, I started being so I wasn't sure so she wasn't shutting down anymore about sitting about doing hard because she knew that okay, maybe I can do this because I've made this, I've made this short little goal. So now because we begin we begin doing things like this, because I knew that the spelling or saying that she was not going to get all 10 of these words this week or whatever the case may be. I said, Hey, our goal this week is for you to spell these five right here, and it's like that. So, you know, when it came home, it was still a 50 on this on this test or anything, but here it was. This is what we celebrated right here. She did all five of those, and we started, and then so she began getting more confident. This, I mean, so she's it's been like I said, it's we've you know, we adopted her a year ago. We've had we've had her now for uh two years. Well, she was in false because she in this short amount of time, she's she has gone from D's and F's. She is was on the A on a roll. This is last grading period. Uh actually four, I think all three so far she's been. She's worked her way up to that. But again, and and it was just seeing that little success that she had. I don't think two, three years ago, she would have ever thought this was going to be something possible for her. But because she had we had these short goals for her, these short, small, these, these small, attainable goals for her. Here we are, you know, we've got 10 words, let's break that down to five words right now, and letting them see that success. And it's for myself, it's the same sort of thing. You know, was you know, I saw three miles, okay, I can do this. And I saw another. And and here, and another important thing, what happens here when you start this goal setting and you said you have these big goals and you start achieving them, and then you along the way, you figure out, you know, there's other changes that I probably need to make too, because for me at the running, it was okay, the longer distance I run, okay. My I I've I've got to start drinking more water.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Okay, I've got to, you know, I've got this the food I'm getting, I said I need to, he said this eating eating these 400 calorie meals. Yeah, eating this is not helping me out. I've got to I've got to slow down, I've got to change this a little bit in order for me to get there. So, and I think with the way with for her, what it was with with as far as the studying was concerned, because she just hated everything, it was okay, now I see that I've got to, okay, for before you get this, and before, in order for me to make these grades, I've got to do a little more studying. And so, and it began, I mean, it was for a while there, my wife and I sitting with her night after night, making her study because it was she did not want to do it because this, but now, I mean, she's completely independent in her in her studies, other than you know, having to check in with us about a math problem like last night, she was getting ready for a test, but she is, you know, because she's she's taking ownership in this now of her grades. She wants to do this, and so she looks for ways in order for me to happen. She realizes that, okay, mom and dad may be busy, but I can do this myself. I can go and do these things. So she's taking that ownership of it because of these small, I think part of partly because of these small attainable goals that we that we set that we helped her set. And then she started seeing the success of these goals, and now she's figured out, but along the way, okay, well, for spelling, this works, but for my math, my my reading, which is a struggle for me, I'm gonna have to do something different. So I've got to, so now I this is this is something else that I'm gonna have to do in order to make this happen. I have to actually study its vocabulary words this week in order for me to get this grade. And she's begun and she's begun to see these little other, these other things along the way that help her to reach those goals that that are start changing some of the other life habits she had. And that's kind of been with me because that's that's the when the weight started coming off. Was I thought there were other I saw that if I wanted to reach, be able to run this marathon, I've got to change my eating habits.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

I love that because then the goal became your own creation. Yes. So I'm what I'm getting from this is that there's hope for parents out there because be patient and be experim experimental with, you know, the methods and have fun with it.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Yes, absolutely. Have a great time with it. You know, just I mean, this and and at the dinner table, it's this is great. You know, we I think a lot of times we've gotten away from the family dinner time, things like that. And this is a great way to do that, to sit down and talk about talk about your goals at the dinner table. You know, what how did we what do we do today in order to what what we do towards what do we do to uh what steps that we make towards making our goals today and celebrating those? What and what kind of failures that I had. I mean, sometimes it's just funny to even talk about some of those, yeah. Things like that, because sometimes and and making it, you know, just not a a disaster sort of thing. It was it's something here, and we laugh about it and we kind of pick up from there and and move on.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

I love that. Don't keep the failures hidden. Right. Let's talk about them at the dinner table. Everyone has failures. Normalize the process. This has been so educational and so fun, so energy filled. I'm sure the listener can feel your passion through their their headphones. So thank you so much for sharing this. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_02 29:05

I think Nancy, and I and I think I probably may have stated this earlier, is just I see this as not only an important life skill. Goal setting is, I mean, this encompasses, I think I've mentioned is uh so much of our life. We encompasses our personal lives, our our our personal lives, our work lives, our I mean, this is going to affect employees if they're future employers. There's it's going to affect their future success in school, their future success in their personal lives with their future spouses, things that all these sort of things. So this is a skill that I really consider very, very important. I hope that everyone would take this to heart and and start be and start setting goals with their children and setting goals with themselves.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and share. Voices United in Education is a production of Escambia County Public Schools.