Last week, my students and I had a fishbowl discussion on soft skills. We watched two short videos to introduce the topic and generate some questions and notes. What happened next was fascinating.
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Students began to share personal experiences with soft skills and how they were growing. One student talked about a first job at a water park and learning how to talk with different people. Another mentioned that she volunteered at a retirement home and had to work with a mix of senior adults. Some didn't mention any jobs but instead talked about how they were learning soft skills by simply meeting new people through their friends.
Much of the discussion focused on one soft skill - communication, which I thought was kind of shallow. There are a TON of different soft skills. Why do we keep talking about this one? When I reflected on it later, I realized how deep this one soft skill of communication is. People are different, very different. Some are old, some young, some Japanese, some Persian, some Caucasian, some Latino, some from wealthy families, some from underprivileged families, some educated, some not, etc. Communicating with each of these groups of people requires skill. It requires a great deal of empathy to know who you're talking to and what presuppositions you might be walking into. In a sense, we never stop growing in this soft skill because we never really stop meeting new people.
I thought back to first year teaching. When I started, I was an expert at communicating with adults, my peers, and senior adults. Shoot, I was homecoming king in college. I had the whole popularity thing figured out so that should automatically make me an expert at communicating with 8th grade students right? HA! The culture of an 8th grade classroom was totally different than what I was used to, and I struggled. Thankfully, first year teaching doesn't last forever, and I finally learned how to communicate to students by breaking up my activities, giving voice and choice, focusing on the positive more than the negative, using 21st century technology, and a variety of other things. This know-how didn't come naturally. I had to live through the experiences and embrace it. I had to talk to other teachers to get advice. I had to stop and think about what was going on. I had to constantly critique and revise what I was doing. In the end, this one little fragment of my communication skill set was improved, and I became a much more effective teacher and leader to my students.
1. How do you teach soft skills in your daily interactions with students?
2. Have you ever designed an experience that put students into a situation so that their communication skills could develop? (like working with or presenting to a group of doctors, young children, or senior adults?). Please share!
3. I've heard it said that technology has harmed our students' ability to communicate (always face down in phones/iPads). How do we turn around and use technology to improve soft skills? (i.e. make a video yourself speaking + analyze it)
2. Have you ever designed an experience that put students into a situation so that their communication skills could develop? (like working with or presenting to a group of doctors, young children, or senior adults?). Please share!
3. I've heard it said that technology has harmed our students' ability to communicate (always face down in phones/iPads). How do we turn around and use technology to improve soft skills? (i.e. make a video yourself speaking + analyze it)