Teaching Personal Skills In the Classroom
There was an Instagram Reel trend going around recently for teachers. So obviously, it was always in my feed. It was a picture of a teacher on summer break with the caption “Yes, I get summers off but I also get…” and the rest of the carousel was the impactful things they do in the classroom with their students. Like building relationships, cheering on their students, watching students' curiosity blossom and so much more.
When I think about what I would write on that type of post I want to say “I saw students become well-rounded, passionate people in whatever field or life path they chose.” I care so much more about the personal skills they learn in my classroom than the content. Hands down.
Some Career Tech programs have leadership skills or soft skills in their curriculum. But, some of us either don’t have it in the curriculum or tend to skip over those standards in order to get to the meat of the curriculum.
I like to think about personal skills as the bones. If you don’t have the bones the meat is just mush with no structure.
Teaching personal skills are important regardless of the content area.
Some of these skills are taught through your classroom expectations and routines. Some you might need to stretch a little bit for students to understand and then practice.
Could you imagine if all of your students understood and consistently demonstrated things like:
✔️Accountability
✔️Curiosity
✔️Initiative
✔️Active Listening
✔️Generosity
✔️Patience
✔️Organization and so many more.
That would be the DREAM right?! But, I will say, the kids won’t grasp it unless we are intentional about teaching, encouraging, noticing and practicing these skills with them.
I know for me I learn a lot of these skills through my involvement in extracurricular activities like 4-H, overnight camp, sports teams and clubs.
I don’t remember one class I took in middle or high school that explicitly taught me how to be a WELL-ROUNDED PERSON.
But, be mindful and remember that not every student will be active in an extra-curricular activity. For a wide variety of reasons you may never know. This is why teaching in the classroom is critical so all students get the benefit of learning these skills.
This is something that I want to change in my classroom. I want to make the space for students to practice these characteristics so they can continue to hone them as they continue through formal education and into their careers. Because someday they will be my doctor, child’s teacher, military, doctor, administrator, business owner, and so much more. And I want them to be equipped to be the best “whatever” they want to be.
So how do you teach these skills and keep them on the forefront of your classroom when you have 587 other things to achieve in the year? I have a few suggestions that I have used in a variety of classrooms that you can try out.
I think it is also something that you can invent on your own. Puzzle piece together some ideas and tweak and refine until it fits your classroom vibe. Like always, remember these are just suggestions to get your brain going. You are the expert in your classroom, with your students and your community and know what works best!
4 Ideas to integrate Personal Skill Development in your Classroom
Classroom Jobs
Classroom Jobs have been integral in both my middle and high school classrooms. And we all know elementary students love a good job! Classroom Jobs are good for all ages. I have done some jobs that are as simple as a “stamp team” who stamp warm-ups each day to application based jobs where students were in charge of classroom animals for an entire year called “animal mentors.”
Most of the time when creating classroom jobs I think of a task that I could off-load to a student (with proper training). This makes having classroom jobs a win-win. Students are practicing personal skills and you have less work to do!
So when you want to implement these classroom jobs ask yourself these question:
-What is a task that I do that I could delegate to a student?
-How will I select classroom job holders?
-How will I evaluate their performance in personal skill development?
Weekly Focal Characteristics
Something very simple you could try is having one personal skill as a focal skill for that week. Introduce the characteristic in class on Monday with a definition and class discussion on “how can we demonstrate this skill in class this week” and then be on the lookout for that student throughout the week.
I have seen ideas on Instagram of the selected student from the prior week chooses the next week's winner. You could also have a voting box/google form for students to provide evidence of their nomination.
I think this year I might be using my wheel of names to randomly pick a student at the beginning of the week to watch for the demonstration of that skill. Then at the end of the week if they achieved progress, I would reward them with a positive note home and something from my prize bin!
To get started using this technique ask yourself these questions:
-What characteristics are important for my students to learn and develop?
-How will I teach students about this skill?
-How will students demonstrate and be rewarded for their progress?
Quote/Leaders of the Week
Do you use warm-ups during the week? Yea, me too! A simple switch could be taking one day during the week to do a quote or leader of the week that demonstrates a personal skill.
Your students will still get the content warm-ups throughout the rest of the week. Just add these quotes/leaders to one day for a quick discussion session with your students. You can also use the same techniques of rewarding these skills from the previous idea!
When implementing a quote/leaders of the week as yourself these questions:
-Do you want to use quotes, leaders or a combination of both?
-When will you present these quotes/leaders to your class?
How will students demonstrate and be rewarded for emulating that skill from the quote/leader?
Personal Development Ponderings
I created this activity with my leadership class that actually had standards related to this activity. Students were assigned a week to present a Personal Development Pondering (PDP as we liked to call them) on Friday. Students would live their life looking for demonstrations of Personal Skills throughout the week. This could be something they saw in class, on a TV show, in a sports practice, at a club meeting, something they saw on a TikTok, something they read in a book/article. Truly the sky was the limit.
Then on Friday, they would stand in front of the class and share about their observation and how that connected to something we learned in our class. I vividly remember a student brushing her teeth during a PDP talking about consistency as a leader. So creative and very memorable.
This was a great way to take the training wheels off and let them experience personal skills and share about them in their own way.
This idea was used exclusively in a higher level leadership class but could be modified to fit your students!
If you decide to implement PDPs, ask yourself these questions to get started:
-How will students be assigned this assignment?
-How will students present or share their PDPs?
-How will you grade them?
If you can’t tell, I am very passionate about preparing students for their future. Not just because my content is important but because our job as educators is to prepare them for life. I take that job seriously.
Personal skills can be cultivated in so many ways but don’t fall into the trap that just because you have high achieving students they know and are proficient in these skills. Just like any skill like driving a car, creating a TikTok, changing your smoke alarm batteries, mowing the law, doing a pull-up, it requires practice. Challenge yourself to give your students a safe place to practice these skills!
