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- Teaching "Soft" Skills
In a recent article with Edutopia, Adam Grant goes into depth about the skills future students need to learn and emphasizes the “nurturing” of soft skills. He claims this will not only produce higher quality humans, but will also be more beneficial for their overall career earnings as well.
Typically these traits are associated with just not being an asshole. Students often snicker when I mention that most of what we do in the Social Studies classroom is develop good citizens, but it is interesting to note the correlation between developing the healthy citizen or “character skills” is the reason why these individuals achieve higher earning levels, not that income and character development need to be mutually exclusive. It is these specific “character skills that are as much as 2.4 times more accurate then math and reading standardized test scores at predicting adult income.” While this still prioritizes income as the general rule of the successful individual, it is almost refreshing to see a return on the ‘value’ of cultivating social strength rather than the simple pursuit of the heftiest paycheque.
For relaying some well-received specificity, Grant further points his emphasis of soft skills as the “important intangible qualities that are vital for future career success—dispositions like discipline and determination and being proactive and prosocial. Developing these skills, cannot happen in a vacuum.” Grant states students “need the opportunity and motivation to to nurture these skills and to accomplish this, schools need to infuse play throughout the school day.” Further, educators should be “challenging students to push through struggle and discomfort, and rethinking grading practices so they highlight not just performance but growth over time.”
What is subtly disheartening here is the lack of guidance in rectifying this plan in the pathway towards play. Is it the case that playing a board game instead of lecturing for a day is going to lead our students to a double their income, all the while we put a dozen hours into reforming our unit into a series of play only to hear complaints from students and parents about their child not learning anything because the teacher is not molding to the traditional image of knowledge imposer?
In Education, we are often rigorous with our methods, projects, rubrics, and rarely is it a primary focus that we focus on the formation of the entire student as a citizen in society. Community is often seen as second to academic performance, as it something we assume the students will develop on their own. Yes, Social Studies does require us in some ways to provide emphasis on collaborative work and discussion, but there are things such as behaviour and attendance of which teachers are explicitly not allowed to incorporate into their assessment.
Yet these are the some of the main things, as Grant would suggest, should have more in play with how we measure the level of improvement in students each encompass the attitude of the student as these signal to their peers the commitment they have to their work.
Discipline is the most obvious one to almost anyone, and is something almost every single podcast is reiterating in some way or another these days. One of my students asked me this week if I intended on seeking individuals outside of Education onto the podcast, my explicit response was I did not want to become another “just work harder” bro on the internet.
As a personal fan of many of these internet bros, it is often the romanticized image of the mysterious loner who ‘works harder in silence’ than any others.
How then, does one teach discipline to their students other than simply modelling it on a daily basis? How do we teach discipline through play?
This Week on the Pod:
Tany Yao - Tany is currently the MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo and also holds the role as Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Health. On this episode, Tany and I discuss his move into provincial politics and his hilarious harassment of Brian Jean in 2015, his experience of being an Emergency Responder, what Danielle Smith has that Jason Kenny does not, the future of the NDP without Rachel Notley, safe consumption sites, dealing with the politician label, and, much more.
Next Week on the Pod:
Cabrina Lafonte - Cabrina is teacher from Virginia and is currently in her sixth year in the profession. On this episode, Sabrina and I discuss the specialization process of Special Education, Multi-Sensory Reading Instruction, gamifying her classroom, teaching in the ‘armpit’ of her school, academic regressions from her students after Covid, teaching parents to teach during Covid, tactics she uses to change it up the classroom, the recent uptick in people hiring Educational Advocates and their presence in schools, the training (or lack thereof) for inclusive Education for handling practical scenarios, how Cabrina would map out a university course for Inclusive Education, how she can no longer ‘hang’ on vacations with the levels of teacher tired, the importance of returning respect for teachers, and, much more.