Every adult who works with youth is in the hope business.
We hope they’ll grow. We hope they’ll heal. We hope they’ll discover who they are and what they can become. And then we search for the right tools to help make all that hoping real.
One of the most practical tools we have is also one of the most human: goal-setting.
In Calhoun County, Michigan, Starr Commonwealth’s Student Resilience and Empowerment Center (SREC) serves middle school students—exactly that age when childhood certainty gives way to adolescent questions. Within those walls, we have learned something about empowerment that stretches far beyond sixth, seventh, or eighth grade.
We have learned how to turn goals into launch pads.
Focus on the Process More Than the Product
Middle schoolers arrive at the SREC carrying invisible backpacks. Some are filled with grief, trauma, toxic stress, academic frustration, or behavioral health challenges. Others simply hold the everyday weight of growing up.
Our instinct as adults is often to aim for immediate turnaround: raise this grade, stop that behavior, fix this problem.
The SREC has taught us to slow down.
Real empowerment happens when we focus less on the final target and more on the reliable cycle of growth: identify a goal, reflect on it, rate it, receive feedback, make improvements, and try again tomorrow.
That process is portable. Any parent, teacher, counselor, or mentor can use it with a child of any age.
Let Youth Self-Identify Goals
At the SREC, goals are not prescribed—they are discovered.
Students are invited into conversations where they name what matters most to them. They set goals connected to academics, behavior, relationships, and personal values. This is courageous work for a 12- or 13-year-old who may be more familiar with being evaluated than being consulted.
We have found that when a young person helps choose the destination, they are far more willing to take the trip.
While the SREC applies this practice specifically with middle school students, the lesson for adults is universal: Nothing motivates a child more than being taken seriously.
Use Self-Rating to Build Independence
One of the signature strategies Calhoun County students practice at the SREC is learning to self-rate their goals.
“How am I doing—1 to 5?”
That question becomes an honest mirror. Youth learn to measure their own effort, to notice their own choices, and to adjust their own steps. Over time they need fewer external prompts because they have developed internal awareness.
If self-rating can help a middle schooler recognize progress, it can also help:
- an elementary student reflect on reading stamina,
- a high schooler track attendance,
- or a young child connect daily actions to personal growth.
The strategy belongs to anyone willing to ask the question.
Feedback Is Where Mastery Grows
At the SREC, students practice receiving feedback the way gardeners receive rain.
Not as criticism—as nourishment.
Educators and SREC staff help youth rehearse new skills, make adjustments, and experience improvement in real time. The program models for them that setbacks are not failures—they are information.
The broader lesson for us as adults is powerful:
Children of every age flourish when adults treat feedback as a gift and an invitation for conversation, instead of a verdict.
Wrap Goals in the Circle of Courage
What is most inspiring is how The SREC does not approach goals as isolated fragments. They are intentionally connected to the Circle of Courage—belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity.
Middle school students across Calhoun County, MI, learn to see their goals through this holistic lens that they can carry with them through their entire lives to help meet their own needs:
- “When I meet with my counselor, I’m practicing belonging.”
- “When I finish my math work, I’m building mastery.”
- “When I calm myself down, I’m growing independence.”
- “When I help another student, I’m living generosity.”
Goals become more than outcomes—they become pathways to becoming fully human.
Any adult can help any child make those same connections. Wow!
Empowerment Requires a Team
Alas, one of the clearest lessons the students at the SREC have taught us is that goal-setting is not a solo sport.
Youth served by the SREC are supported by a robust network: their school-based adults and educators, families and caregivers, community-based behavioral and mental health providers, coaches, mentors, and SREC staff all working together as one caring coalition.
The program demonstrates what every setting can replicate: coordinated adults, steady communication, consistent celebration of small steps forward.
Belonging is built when collaboration is real.
Celebrate Progress Over Perfection
If you want to see joy, don’t just look for trophies. Look for a child who moved from taking 10 minutes to find their inner calm, to 8 minutes.
At the SREC, the teams intentionally celebrate progress—because perfection is a finish line that keeps moving. Youth learn to notice tiny victories along the way: one better choice, one stronger effort, one kinder interaction.
That celebration culture has become the heartbeat of the program.
And it offers a final, widening lesson for the reader:
The most empowering words an adult can say to a child are, “I see you improving.”
Goal-setting, when done well, shifts the narrative. It moves youth from feeling managed to feeling capable.
The Student Resilience and Empowerment Center in Calhoun County will continue to serve middle school students with intensive, compassionate support. But what those students have already taught us is far bigger than any single program.
They have taught us that when goals are grounded in values, wrapped in holistic needs, rated honestly, supported by caring adults, and celebrated with joy—empowerment becomes possible for every child, everywhere.
That is more than hope.
That is daily practice.
