SGO's and Library Media Specialists: Problems and Solutions

If you're like many of the other public school professionals out there, you've probably recently had to do your SGOs for the year.  In my district, School Library Media Specialists must do SGOs as well.  We were permitted to do a traditional SGO as well as an FGO (facility growth objective).  For my FGO this year I'm doing it on my fiction circulation, the baseline data for which is accessible with a few clicks, but my SGO was much harder to implement.

If you're like me - and many other High School Library Media Specialists - you don't have scheduled classes.  I don't have a specific pool of students that I see all of the time.  I don't grade.  I rarely do lesson plans.  That's just not how I service my students.  Guidance counselors, school psychologists, nurses, and other fellow non-instructional staff also have the same problem.  We need to show measurable student growth without access to our own students.

I'm by no means an expert on SGOs and how to write them, but here's a list of obstacles I've personally experienced in trying to come up with SGOs, and suggestions on how to overcome them: