Those "soft skills"... they matter!

Is it important that students are able to convey their thoughts with dialogue? Is it important that students manage their time well? Or their technology? Is etiquette important? Of course it is; soft skills matter. Being able to communicate appropriately with people matters. Knowing how to use your table service during a dinner party matters!

Our classrooms are petry dishes. They are places to grow hearts and minds. Some folks believe that testing can show growth, but there are too many things that tests cannot cover. To truly test students, you must know them. I'm not sure who came up with the idea of the "3 R's" (Rigor, Relevance, and Relationship) but the most important R - the one that supersedes the other R's - is RELATIONSHIP. If you don't have a good relationship with a student, you are not going to reach them.

How can you tell if you have a good relationship with the kids? I gauge that by what they are willing to ask me. If students ask you for help with menial tasks or things that they are embarrassed about asking others, then it's safe to say that you're in good standing with a kid. Most of these "menial tasks" are soft skills. At least twice a year I find myself helping a young gentleman tie a tie, or a bow tie. I'm telling them to button the top two buttons of their suit jacket, or leave their tux coat unbuttoned. Last week a kid asked me what he should wear for his job interview, and that led to a conversation prepping him for the questions that management might ask him during the interview.

What do tying bow ties and knowing which buttons to button on a suit coat matter? Because it may be the difference between getting the job and getting the "Thank you for your interest..." letter in the future.

Forgive the personal reference, but when I was in high school I was job hunting. I had received an application from a local bank and, early one Saturday morning, I was going to go turn it in. I was halfway down the stairs in our home when my mother said, "Young man! What are you doing?"
"Going to turn in this application." I replied.
"Not dressed like that, I hope." my mother chided.
"What's wrong with my clothes?"
"You can't go to apply for a job like that! Put a suit on!"

Now, my mother could be VERY persuasive. I huffed and puffed over how stupid it was that I had to put on my dumb suit just to drive down the road and hand them an application, but I did it.

I got the job.

About a year later I was having a conversation with my supervisor about how I had come to work at the bank and she told me, "You know, we had actually closed the window for applications the day before. The only reason we accepted yours, was because you looked so nice in your suit."

I tell my students that story every year. They all laugh, but the point has been made. It's okay to take a few minutes to show them how to iron a shirt, or wear a pocket watch. Some of our students have never been told about things like deodorant, or proper amounts and application of perfume. Students need to know these basic skills.

Now, you may say, "That's not your job, that should be taught at home." and I concede that the home is the ideal place for students to learn such things, but they are not getting it at home. So, we come to a place of decision: Do you just teach your content and let students remain in their ignorance concerning everything else? Or are you teaching wholistically? Are you teaching students, not just about the Arts and Sciences, but how to be a human being? I afford them dignity, and I expect them to share that dignity with others.

Their music is not teaching them to be courteous or dignified. The political institutions are not teaching them to discuss and work out their issues. Many of them are not receiving instruction in the home, nor at their place of worship. Their recreational activities are not teaching them sportsmanship or priority. To the contrary, I have witnessed firsthand as a coach the ridiculous, callous, and foolish expressions of (poor) sportsmanship from parents that are trying to relive days-gone-by through their children. Many school Arts programs are no better. As a father, I can't hardly watch a high school dance review...

We have forgotten how to be gracious to one another. We have forgotten how to win graciously and lose with dignity.We have forgotten how to dress for dinner and wash our hands, and comb our hair. We have forgotten that some things are sacred. We have forgotten to look out for our neighbor. We have forgotten courtesy; and it seems to take unspeakable crimes, like the Boston Bombing, to pull us back into focus - to remember our humanity, and our frailty.

Teach the soft skills too. Model them. Stop your lecture for a minute to show them how to do something. Build them into your project. Demand them in the cafeteria and the hallways. Demand them on the field of sport. Demand them in the auditorium. Students must learn to turn off their cell phone. Students must know how to dress for the occasion. Students must learn the arts of both conversation and debate. Students must learn when to keep their opinions to themselves and when to express them and those are simple things that can be taught in your classroom and in your school.

Build a culture in your school that you would like to see out on the street, because that's where they're going to take it.

It's all about the process.

Life is about processes, systems, and algorithms. Do you have a process for your class?

Agenda during the MYTH project

My teaching partner and I have a pretty simple daily routine:

• A "monologue" (We always write "Announcements") to kick things off.
• Period of work.
• Time of reflection and review. 

During the monologue we give the agenda for the day, identify our goals (the standards and objectives that we want the students to learn), and express little anecdotes that may be helpful for students. The work period is just that - time to work, ask questions, and generally get stuff done. The time of reflection at the end of the period is generally verbal, and occurs while the students are packing up to go to their next class. It takes about 5 minutes and we assess what happened during the class period. It is often unstructured. This review is simple, but usually very effective. St. Thomas Aquinas theorized that people learn best through interaction. There may indeed be something to this model, as the interaction during the reflection time seems to leave the most "learning anchors" in place. I would invite you to try this concept in your classroom and look for retention.

Our projects have a structure too. Think of a large arc, with little daily arcs inside creating the whole. 

We start each "Unit" or "Project" with an entry event, which introduces the students to the big idea. Our Nosce te Ipsum (Know Thyself) project has, what I consider to be the most genius entry event. We simply write the words, "Nosce te Ipsum" on the board and smile. The students always go right to the web. Before they have finished typing the first word into their Google search bar, they always say, "Who's So-CRATES?" Sarah and I always laugh and say, "It's pronounced, So-crat-es." Once students have completed their first exploration of the entry event we start chronicling their questions. 

"Knows" from the Nosce te Ipsum project.

We were trained by the New Tech Network to perform "Knows, Need-to-Knows, and Next Steps," but generally we feed right into Need-to-Knows after the entry event because the students begin asking questions right away and we don't want to hinder that. The trick is not to answer their questions up front, but inspire new questions. Sarah is much better at this waiting without answering - or answering a question with a question - than I am. Most of the time, the students answer their own questions. They get tired of waiting on us and they solve the problems themselves. This is exactly what we want - to create first responding problem solvers, not people who wait around to be spoon-fed answers!

After the entry event we go through a period of scaffolding. Scaffolding takes a week or two and is comprised of workshops that are built on student inquiry and teacher defined problems. For example, a student may ask, "How can I compose 3 minutes of orchestrated music for my screen play credits?" I would give a workshop on Orchestration. If my partner notices that students are having trouble organizing their thoughts and ideas, she may say, "I'm going to host a workshop on graphic organizers tomorrow." This process allows us to be sure and hit key standards, but it allows student voice and choice in their work as well. The students get the chance to be a part of their own education and most of them seize it.

After the period of scaffolding, there is a period of construction where students prepare for their presentations. Critics of PBL (Project-based Learning) often suggest that this is "down time" or "free days", but they couldn't be more wrong. The construction process is where most of the soft skills practice occurs. How do you deal with someone who doesn't pull their weight? How do you overcome technology pitfalls? How can I work with someone I've never spoken to before? How can we present this so that both of us have an equal share in the speaking roles? How do we plan together? How do we execute our joint vision? The word here is collaboration. Students learn more about themselves and what it takes to get things done - including time management - during this period, than any other time during the project. 

The final step in the process is the presentation. In science and math classes, students are often tackling a real-world problem that has ramifications beyond the classroom. Our class, though, is Literature and the Arts. We are simply creating works of art and studying the works of master artists before us. Our work is primarily aesthetic. I've found, though, that the students invest themselves more into our projects. The project becomes personal for them. It's meaningful because they have derived some meaning from it. Our presentations have been live stagings of plays, art walks, poetry slams, film screenings, speeches, and concerts. We have presented to large crowds at football games and small groups of administrative persons in the library. During this step the students gather feedback and get a chance to really shine. More importantly, though, they get to experiment. Very often I hear the phrase, "What did you think?" or "How did I do?". I don't recall ever asking my teachers how I did... it was a worksheet. I don't even recall reading the numbers at the top. So much for feedback, eh?

The process is important. We are teaching students more than just what to DO; we are teaching them how to THINK. And thinking is a process that starts with the inception of thoughts based upon associations assimilated by experience. Once this platform of ideas occurs our minds begin to synthesize what we already know and juxtapose that against what we do not know - our need-to-knows. This process defines our next steps, which should involve hypothesis and experimentation - ultimately leading us to the creation of new solutions. Students aren't going to find that on a worksheet. It is our job to create it for them. Set up the proverbial dominoes so your kids can knock them down, laugh, and re-build their own version. 

Until next week.