What is a Good Goal for High School Students? 12 Goal Ideas & How to Teach Goal Setting

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High school is a time for students to grow and explore, and one of the best ways for them to navigate this journey of self-discovery is through goal setting. By setting clear, actionable goals, high schoolers can take concrete steps toward figuring out what they want to do or achieve and developing the skills they’ll need to get there. Use these meaningful goal-setting activities for high school students to help them answer the question: “What is a good goal for high school?”

12 Examples of Goals for High School Students 

In high school, students will increasingly take charge of setting goals for their learning. While students’ goals will vary depending on their abilities, interests, and aspirations, you can inspire them to start thinking about what to aim for with this list of short- and long-term high school goals.

• Participate More in class: “I will raise my hand at least once every day to answer questions, ask for clarification, or contribute to group discussions.”
• Improve daily Study Habits: “This semester, I will improve my study habits by setting aside 30 minutes each day to focus on studying without distractions.”
• Explore Extracurricular Activities: “This month, I commit to attending one meeting for a club or a team that sparks my interest.”
• Seek Constructive Feedback: “I will ask my teachers for feedback on at least one assignment each month.”
• Strengthen Public Speaking Skills: “I will work on my presentation skills by practicing speaking in front of my friends or family once a month.”
• Learn About Career Options: “By the end of the year, I will have researched three career options that interest me and learn more about what’s required for each.”
• Achieve a Specific GPA: “I will work toward maintaining a GPA of 3.5 or higher throughout high school.”
• Research Higher Education: “I will research at least five colleges by the end of my sophomore year.”
• Develop Leadership Skills: “I will take on a leadership role in at least one extracurricular activity by my senior year.”
• Prepare for a Career: “I will intern or volunteer in a field related to my career interests by the summer before my senior year.”
• Complete a College-level Course: “I will take at least one Advanced Placement or dual enrollment college course before graduation.”
• Participate in Community Service: “I will complete 10 hours of community service this semester to help others.”

Teaching Students about Setting High School Goals 

Teaching students how to set effective goals goes beyond just handing them a list of things they might want to accomplish — like getting good grades or exploring career options. It’s about helping them understand the “why” behind their goals, teaching them to make their goals specific and achievable, and showing them how to track their progress (and adjust when necessary). 

To help students get started, try these three strategies to teach high schoolers about goal setting. Pair them with engaging goal-setting activities for high school students that will make these lessons meaningful. You can teach goal setting throughout the school year or during reset moments like back to school, New Year’s, or after an extended school break. You can even have students reflect on the goals they set for themselves as part of an end-of-year senior project. 

Get students invested in identifying their goals

Ask students goal-setting questions to encourage introspection, critical thinking, and deeper engagement. Not only will these questions bring students more deeply into the learning process, but they will also help students practice the foundational SEL skill of self-awareness. This skill is essential for setting attainable goals because they are subjective and personal, so strong goal-setting hinges on students’ understanding of their beliefs, values, and strengths.

Identifying Your Goals Setting Activity & Setting Goals Preparation Skills
By Informed Decisions
Grades: 6th-12th
Subject: School Counseling

This resource helps students explore their aspirations, identify meaningful goals, and understand the steps needed to achieve them. With a focus on both short-term and long-term goals, this activity is perfect for encouraging self-reflection, planning, and personal growth.

Conversation Starters for Middle & High School | Goal Setting
By College Counselor Studio
Grades: 9th-12th
Subject: School Counseling

Introduce SMART goals, long-term goals, short-term goals, college goals, and more to your students with this conversation starter set! This is a perfect pairing for any college and career readiness curriculum and includes 100 goal-setting discussion questions and prompts to help students begin to articulate their goals.

Provide hands-on practice with goal setting and tracking

Goal setting is like a muscle: It’s a skill that needs to be exercised. Practice is essential for this! Build the skill by incorporating goal-setting activities for high school students into your lessons. Provide more guidance at the start and begin with smaller tasks or lower stakes before working students up to bigger or more in-depth goals, projects, or activities.

Growth Mindset Goal Setting Activity and Banner Display – ENGLISH version
By La Misi de Espanol
Grades: 7th-10th
Subject: Art, Character Education, English Language Arts

This reflection activity and display is perfect for secondary students during back to school or as a welcome back from break activity. Have students reflect on their goals with a graphic organizer that promotes thinking about concrete steps to achieve them. Then, hang a colorful bunting banner display with positive mottos from students to motivate them to give their best throughout the year. 

Goal Setting Classroom Lesson for High School Students
By Counselor Clique
Grades: 9th-12th
Subject: School Counseling, School Psychology

This goal-setting activity helps counselors engage teens with goal setting, problem-solving, and belief in their own abilities. This resource can be used as a classroom lesson or a “lunch-and-learn” lesson series. Students will focus on SMART goal setting, overcoming barriers, establishing accountability, recognizing self-talk, and putting actions to their words. 

Apply the skill over time

Goal setting is also a skill that requires consistency to become a functioning habit in students’ lives and mindsets. Have your class fill out a student goal-setting template with real goals they want to achieve, track, and reflect on over the term.  

Using templates, you can have students track their goals so that they are reminded to think about them — not just set them and forget them. This also allows students to visualize their progress, which can encourage a growth mindset and help them understand that goals take time to achieve. As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day!”

Goal Setting for High School Students
By Culbert the Chemist
Grades: 9th-12th
Subject: Classroom Community

This resource guides students through crafting four SMART goals. It includes a student-facing worksheet with step-by-step instructions, two classroom posters, designs for a goal-themed bulletin board, and detailed teacher implementation guidance.

Why are high school goals important?

In high school, goal setting is important because it gives students the opportunity to assert their growing independence, manage their own tasks and the emotions that accompany them, and take the wheel in driving their learning as they look ahead to adulthood. In terms of their social-emotional development, setting goals can increase students’ self-management and self-awareness over time.

However, goal setting is not something that students inherently know how to do; it has to be taught. Without the guidance from educators on the question of what is a good goal for high school, students may set goals that are unattainable or too vague. This can lead to students feeling frustrated and abandoning their goals when they don’t see progress. For students to grow, their goals need to be motivating and achievable. This is a key component of goal setting that will allow your students to see its many benefits.

The Benefits of Teaching Goal Setting to Students

Ultimately, goal setting is a transferable skill that students will take with them beyond your classroom and throughout their lives. And the impact is huge — even if it can’t be shown in a goal tracker. Some of the major benefits of goal setting include:

• It engages students in the process of personalizing and differentiating their learning by giving them agency and choice.
• Students develop self-awareness about their strengths and the interconnected nature of emotions, behavior, and actions through self-reflection.
• Goal setting centered on progress over results helps students develop a growth mindset.
• Students feel in control, empowered, and motivated to learn and grow.
• Goal setting creates a self-management framework through which students can take on more responsibility.
• Accomplishing self-set goals can build up self-efficacy and, by proxy, self-esteem.
• Students learn how to identify, communicate, and advocate for their learning needs.
• Goal setting now will help set students up for success later in goal-driven environments like college and work. 

Setting goals for high school students is easy with TPT

No matter what they’re aiming for, by teaching your high school students about goal setting, you’re setting them up for success — not just in your classroom but in many other aspects of their lives. Use these activities to get started, or find more high school goal-setting resources on TPT.