The Country School is an independent, coeducational, Pre-K through 8 school founded in 1934.
Right Start Blog
Soft and Life Skills
Our Life Skills teacher, Susan Walter, discusses the "soft" skills kids will need both socially and professionally in the future, and how we try to equip them.
As I continue to “raise" my daughter, who is now in her late twenties, I think about what she needs to find success as an adult. (For those of you who thought “raising” a child ended at a certain time, think again!) And I reflect on the question of, “What do the children of today need for, as my daughter so grudgingly puts it, ‘adult-ing?’”
Relatedly, I worry that the more our children spend leisure time in front of screens, the less time they have to develop the crucial set of “soft skills.” I have been reading a lot about soft skills, and how the age of automation makes them more important than ever. Soft skills include those that an employee needs to be successful in her or his position that are separate from academic skills.
Some of the most crucial soft skills include:
- The ability to hold face-to-face conversations
- Critical thinking and being a creative problem-solver
- Working well with others, including conflict resolution
- The ability to receive feedback and act with cultural sensitivity
As a Life Skills teacher and Advisory Coordinator, I try to provide opportunities for the personal engagement at the core of so many soft skills. Utimately these soft skills set us apart from our automated counterparts and are steeped in our Country School values of cooperation, compassion, and respect.
In keeping with the theme of soft skills here, I often think of other skill sets that maybe our children are missing. Does your child know how to sew on a button? Change a tire? Cook a basic meal? In an article entitled, “The 12 Important Life Skills I Wish I Had Learned In School,” the author Geoff Pilkington shares the top skills that he feels schools and parents don’t spend enough time teaching. These skills include:
- Managing money
- Mental health
- Dating and romantic relationships
- Home and care (buying, selling, repair, management, maintenance)
- Marriage, family and raising kids
- Credit cards
- Professional etiquette and manners
- Cooking (I wrote about this skill in my 2018 newsletter article)
- Time management
- Coping with failure
- Survival skills
- Applying for jobs
A tongue-in-cheek quote at the end of this life skills article reads, “I didn’t learn any life survival skills in school (taxes, budgeting, etc.) but I can still definitely say I know mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Agreed?” This quote struck me in my science teacher core!
I am writing to you about this topic in hopes that we as teachers can form a partnership with you to teach our children the soft- and life-skills they so desperately need to be happy, healthy, and independent adults.
“Formal learning can teach you a great deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own.” Lee Iacocca
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