Goal Teams function best in an environment that fosters vulnerability, sharing, and peer-to-peer support.

Goal Teams are a key way to reinforce, magnify, and strengthen school culture and community. While this structure functions best within an environment that fosters vulnerability, sharing, and peer-to-peer support, when these conditions do not already exist Goal Teams can be leveraged to help develop them through proactive relationship-building, celebrations of student progress, and more.

Strong Goal Teams rely on Goal Coaches who believe that this role holds equal importance to their role as teacher or staff member.

Goal Coach: The success of any Goal Team hinges on the Goal Coach. While typically a teacher, a Goal Coach can be any staff person who has the skills and mindset needed to run a Goal Team. Those who see themselves as having a dual role—being both school staff and a Goal Coach—have students who reach goals at a higher rate, have families who feel more involved and connected, and have students who are happier and more successful. 

Successful Goal Coaching involves planning for and facilitating frequent Goal Team meetings involving goal setting, goal reflection, 1:1 conferencing with students, relationship-building, and life habit development. It also requires Goal Coaches to forge relationships with students’ families. 

Goal Team Support: For Goal Teams to thrive, someone at the school needs to own their successful implementation. Goal Teams are most likely to receive the expertise and attention they deserve when this person is a member of the school leadership team, although the role might also be filled by a veteran educator with strong social-emotional knowledge who is seeking additional responsibility. If coaching Goal Teams must be decentralized, it is helpful for the support to be provided by a teacher’s academic coach, as this prevents Goal Coaches from receiving feedback from multiple sources.

Time must be set aside for Goal Teams to meet, as well as regular planning time for Goal Coaches.

Scheduling: In the comprehensive Greenfield School Design, Goal Teams take place every day at a consistent time and last for approximately 45 minutes. However, schools can have Goal Teams meet 2–3 times per week instead, provided the meeting times remain consistent. Some schools elect to hold Goal Teams at the start of the day, but those with late-arrival challenges might consider a schedule buffer (e.g., breakfast or homeroom) or a midday Goal Team meeting to encourage attendance and maximize impact.

Planning Time: Goal Coaches require time in their day to prepare for Goal Teams as well as time to maintain family communication.

Student Grouping: A key factor influencing scheduling is how schools wish to group students. Schools must ensure that groups remain consistent for the duration of the year to promote long-lasting, supportive relationships. Otherwise, how students are grouped can vary depending on a school’s needs or philosophies. For instance, some schools create single-gender teams and allow students to choose which they feel best aligns with their identity, while others create mixed-gender teams. Some schools group students across multiple grades to encourage peer mentorship, while others maintain single-grade groupings so that students in Goal Teams see one another more often throughout the day.

Goal Teams require clear communication protocols for Goal Coaches to connect with parents.

Goal Coaches are the bridge between families and schools. Ideally, they communicate with families weekly, but if they have larger teams, they may communicate once every two weeks instead.

Goal Coaches enhance regular school communication, following up with families about successes, challenges, and students’ progress toward goals. They should make a concerted effort to send positive messages to parents and to ensure that the number of positive messages is higher than the number of negative messages. 

Goal Coaches might choose to implement one or all of the following communication methods:

• weekly school newsletter containing school-wide updates
• weekly progress report on student academic progress
• weekly or biweekly personalized updates via phone or text.

Goal Teams require space for multiple groups to meet concurrently with enough privacy so that team members can share without disruption.

Ideally, each Goal Team will have a private space in which to meet each day to allow its members to speak openly and vulnerably with their group. If this is not possible on a daily basis, schools might consider having Goal Teams share spaces on goal-setting days and find ways to provide private spaces on team-building or reflection days. 

Appropriate meeting locations will depend on the size of the Goal Teams, which in turn is based on the space available in the school and the number of skilled facilitators. 

Finally, some schools choose to create Goal Team boards, where each team posts a picture, a record of their goals, and has flexible space where they can post shoutouts for other group members. This requires an equal amount of space for each group.

Goal Teams can operate with or without technology based on a school’s preferences.

Schools should determine whether technology will enhance or detract from the Goal Team experience. Students can record and track their goals on computers or personal devices, or they can record them in a journal. Teachers can use PowerPoint slides or smart boards to guide meetings but should avoid them if they impede relationship-building and open communication.

Goal Teams can be run without a budget; their primary cost comes in staff capacity.

Staffing Goal Teams typically adds to the instructional and planning load carried by teachers and school staff, which should be considered when planning their schedules. 

While forming students into teams, assigning Goal Coaches, and finding space for each group requires a large operational lift on the front end, there is little maintenance throughout the school year.

Goal Teams do not require any financial expenditure, but schools with flexible money might consider purchasing or printing journals or weekly planners for students to capture and reflect on their progress toward achieving their goals. Additionally, they might consider providing Goal Coaches small budgets to purchase incentives celebrating individual or team progress and important milestones.

School leaders should develop simple tools to assess the strength of Goal Teams and to ground ongoing coaching and development.

Ideally, Goal Team support can be integrated into regular teacher coaching and professional development so that Goal Teams feel like an equally important and integrated part of a Goal Coach’s roles.