View Content #17109

It’s a new year, and what better time to practice reflective learning, make changes, and set new goals? After much debate, our staff felt the framework of New Year’s resolutions feels inauthentic. Nevertheless, a new year triggers a moment of reflection and goal setting.

Each year, we help teachers guide their students in setting their own language learning goals. In an effort to practice what we preach, CASLS staff are setting goals this year, too. After all, people who explicitly make resolutions are ten times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t.

Our staff’s goals for this coming year

- Julie Sykes, Director: “My goal is to make it to the Oregon coast at least once a month. I want to see the changes all year.”

- Mandy Lindgren, Associate Director: “My goal for this year is to take ten minutes out of every day to relax with stretches or deep breathing exercises. I am constantly on the go, thanks to my work at CASLS, my volunteer position at a local nonprofit, and my three-year-old son. Self-care is important for maintaining my health and sanity!”

- Genevieve Beecher, Chinese Flagship Coordinator: “I make daily, weekly, and monthly resolutions, so I don’t usually make a specific New Year’s one. My resolutions are usually about balancing out my life. For example, I plan to go to the disc golf course once each week on my lunch break.”

- Carl Burnstein, Educational Software Developer: “My goal is to improve my knowledge and coding ability for mobile devices.”

- Deborah Cooke, Instructional Designer: “My goal is to work carefully and methodically in a way that infuses reflection and insight for change.”

- Linda Ellis, Business & Financial Development Coordinator: “My watchword for 2014: appreciation. I plan to enjoy having renewed vision, and I will glory in a return to reading and writing fiction! I will play very beautiful piano music very badly. I will see all the colors in the rainbow at every art gallery. I will reduce the font size on my computer. I will return to Ashland, and I’ll recognize friends on the street. I will even revel in the ability to read PowerPoints and see my face clearly in the mirror (maybe). Among many other things, I will appreciate working here with all of you.”

- Linda Forrest, Research Director: “I can’t wait to get exciting new data sets involving language learning games, which is a new direction for CASLS! And I can’t wait to wring information out of DNA analysis for genealogical information in the new data sets I got this year.”

- Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor: “My goal is to prioritize increasing my proficiency in Potawatomi. A target behavior is to be thinking about how I can say something in Potawatomi as often as I can. I also want to use my time more efficiently – especially my screen time! I want to reduce my screen time overall, but I also really value the things that I can do on a computer. I want to work on making the most of the time I spend staring at it.”

- Scott Morison, Educational Software Engineer: “Without discernible measure or proper sense of existential scale, yet increasingly aware of my boundaries, I embark nervously and adventurously into the other half of my allowed quota of human form.”

- Krystal Sundstrom, Online Learning Specialist: “I plan to emphasize the following three areas: content, process, and purpose. My content goals include learning more about gamification and expanding my understanding of learner autonomy. My process goals involve refining my work flow to improve strategic planning and efficiency, and my purpose goals include cultivating a greater sense of creativity and focusing on equity and social justice initiatives.”

- Li-Hsien Yang, East Asia Special Program Coordinator: “My goal is to empower study abroad programs by bridging the relationship between UO campus departments and partner schools.”

- Yifang Zhang, OIIP Director: “My goal is to learn more about pragmatics and the teaching of language and culture, and hopefully I can start to do some kind of research with the existing OIIP data.”

What are your personal reflections and goals for 2014? Share with us on Twitter by tweeting @CASLS_NFLRC or posting on our Facebook page.