Kids Need Interpersonal Skills at School

In my last post, I wrote about providing kids with opportunities to problem-solve and to engage in socializing without the use of technology. In this post, I want to continue to explore the idea of the differences between generations and what our children’s generation will need to develop the soft skills that are necessary for success in their futures.

One of my roles as a school principal is to oversee hiring for my school. Now job applications are collected online. Tools like Indeed and ZipRecruiter make it easy to apply to many jobs with just a few clicks of the mouse. One job posting typically brings in hundreds of applications. Earlier in my career, job postings would solicit only 15 to 20 applications. Most job applicants were qualified for the job. Today, many people look for jobs casually with a shotgun approach to submitting job applications. At times, when I reach out to applicants, there’s never a 100% guarantee they are even waiting for my call or my message.

When I do find those applicants who are qualified and responsive, I can usually tell fairly quickly whether or not they will be a good fit personality-wise. Things like confidence, general attitude, and true experience are revealed pretty quickly. However, it is important to ask probing interview questions that get to whether or not applicants have developed the soft-skills and interpersonal skills they will need to be successful in the workforce. In classrooms across our nation, teachers are sharing that kids are lacking these soft-skills with a much higher frequency as the school year progresses. Many kids are no longer self-motivated. They struggle when asked to work in groups. Often, students approach interactions with education staff and peers with a strong sense of entitlement.

Teaching Kids Essential Interpersonal Skills

Certainly, there are kids in the classroom who still possess these skills. They come to school ready to learn, ready to socialize, and ready to follow school expectations. But in a classroom of 30 students 20 years ago, you may have had one or two students who entered the classroom with a skills-deficit. Today, there are more likely 12-15 students who still need to develop one or more of those highly important abilities. Schools are doing some important interventions to help kids learn these skills on the fly, during content instruction:

Engaging kids in group work with structured roles
Project-based learning to help kids identify and solve problems
Service learning to make the content projects more community-based and relevant
Providing culturally relevant lessons and content to grab students’ interest and help make connections
Goal setting and monitoring with students to help foster a mind towards the future and self-motivation

How Parents Can Help

As the parent, you can take the lead on helping your child with the school’s staff develop these soft skills! During parent meetings and conferences, ask about what opportunities the kids have at the school to build social, emotional, and leadership skills. Examples include:

Partner with your child’s teacher(s) to address times when your child falls short. Advocate for your child, but make sure you work with other adults to help your child learn when they make mistakes.
Sign your child up for extracurricular activities that will require teamwork and interaction. These may include sports, martial arts, reading clubs, or youth service teams.
Make sure your time at home is well-balanced between opportunities to learn and interact and an appropriate amount of screen time.

Kids’ Learning with AI

I was born in 1981, which puts me just on the cusp of generations. I’m at the tail end of the Gen X generation by some timelines and right at the beginning of the Millennial generation on others. Some sociologists even label people born within a few years of my birthday as Xennials, a microgeneration to mark the small and transitional period during which I was born. Personally, I feel that the other Xennials and I got the best of both worlds. We experienced the care-free and independent lifestyle of the Gen Xers, but I got to live my teenage years as the world shifted into the fully digital age. This means I also have a blend of characteristics from the two generations: independent and adaptive. I am also adventurous, creative, tech-savvy, and plugged into the idea that the world is accessible to me, both in terms of information and in opportunity.

Is Techonology Hurting Our Kids?

My daughter was born in 2018, a time much different than the early years of the eighties. She is a member of Gen Alpha. Her life is fully immersed in technology and she is going to come of age in a time when she and her peers are at risk of losing many soft skills and interpersonal skills, including critical thinking and problem-solving. One of the challenges this generation faces is the sheer amount of information and technological capability available in her pocket. Some schools are fully tech-based. This is a characteristic that used to be touted as a unique feature at a school just a decade ago. Now, experts are questioning whether the amount of time students spend on technology is advantageous in the long run. Students are learning 21^st century skills, but are they losing something else that is hugely important to success in life? Are they losing their ability to identify, think through, and solve their own problems without the support of technology? The recent introduction of AI into education may further exacerbate this situation for our children.

Balancing Technology Use at Home

Per my previous posts, I am a proponent of technology in education. I have written about the benefits of AI in our lives, as well as in the lives of students. I still hold to those beliefs about technology. My goal today is to advocate for a better balance in our schools and in the lives of our children. Instead of having our kids go from using tech all day in school to staring at our screens in the living room at home, make sure your children have time at home to solve problems. Play board games that require problem solving and strategic thinking. Include your children in solving everyday problems at home. Also have your kids help you cook and figure out how to fix their own inevitable mistakes in the process. Technology is a wonderful tool. As with most things in our lives, we need to ensure our approach is one of moderation. Technology will continue to be one of our greatest tools and resources. It will also continue to present new social and ethical problems as it develops. As parents, let’s make sure our kids learn to use new tools while also providing opportunities for our kids to engage, socialize, and problem-solve using the tools that were naturally developed in the world of previous generations.

How to Parent Challenged Students

It is the dead of winter and students are locked up in classrooms with limited time to play outside due to unrelenting wind, cold, rain, or snow. Several students are recovering from viruses and flu. Many survive boredom by spending relentless hours playing computer games and visiting with their classmates online. Teachers are challenged with students suffering from cabin fever and mild winter depression.

Effective Classroom Strategies for Home Use

Here are 10 effective classroom management strategies that teachers use to calm students. These strategies are also effective for parents to use with their children at home.

Create a quiet space for children that is away from distractions and provides a nurturing environment. My classroom quiet space includes large soft huggable stuffed animals that children can lay on and read mediative books to self-regulate when overwhelmed with challenging situations.
Provide an assortment of fidget toys that may include squish and squeeze toys, rainbow relief sensory viewers, puzzle cubes, and fidget toys. These toys help students reduce their anxiety, relax, self-regulate, and concentrate.
Teach students slogans and cues to help them refocus and relax when learning difficult lessons.
Encourage students to breathe deeply and slowly exhale five times when feeling over-whelmed.
Integrate brain breaks throughout the day that may include dancing and singing with a video song, exercising, playing Simon Says with various movements, and participating in a daily run in favorable weather.
Have students participate in meditation and yoga activities before tests, after lunch time recess, and before large assembles.
Transition from one activity to another with fun brain breaks.
Reward students working extra hard with stickers and small incentive rewards.
Reward the class with points that are gained from focused learning and successful completion of assignments. A total of 50 points earned can be rewarded with special activities including pajama day, pizza party, popsicle treats, and technology day.
Reward the class on Fridays for a successful and productive week with 30 minutes of free play at the end of school day.

Emergency Survival Strategies

Some days are excessively difficult for struggling students. These 10 strategies can help teachers and parents reset a challenging day into a calmer day:

Have a staff member escort a student to a neutral area outside of the classroom for a time-out or for added time spent outdoors when weather permits.
Send the student to the nurse’s station or to the front office when the student is so overwhelmed with disturbing behaviors that may hurt themself or emotionally traumatize other students.
Conference with parents on a regular basis to ensure the parents of aware of their child’s challenged behaviors and work as a team to solve classroom misbehaviors.
Invite the student’s parent to volunteer in the classroom to help calm the student.
Partner with the parent to seek outside professional help for severely troubled students.
Model strategies that parents can use to help calm their child at home.
Encourage parents to practice regularly scheduled and relaxing bedtime preparation activities with their child that ensure sufficient sleep.
Encourage parents to prepare nutritional snacks and lunches that their child can easily eat at school.
Make sure the student drinks sufficient amounts of water daily and uses the bathroom regularly.
Enlist the assistance of the school nurse, counselor, and administrative staff when necessary.

When all else fails, the school staff will meet with parents to create a student success plan to monitor behaviors and ensure the student is receiving adequate support at home with partnership support at the school site.

Much success as you navigate the winter and spring quarters with your child in partnership with the classroom teacher.

Help for Troubled Students

Is Your Child Disruptive at School?

Each day, we drop our kids off at school or at the bus stop hoping they have a great day. No parent wants anything bad to happen to their children or secretly hopes that their child is not causing trouble all day. No parent teaches their child to be disruptive, to break school rules, or to defy authority “just because.” But as any teacher or school employee will tell you, there are kids in our classes where it sometimes feels like this is the case. We have students who cause disruptions from the moment they walk through the front doors. For some students, even the most simple and obvious correction of behavior erupts into defiance or argument. As a parent, when the school communicates about concerns, how do you respond?

How to Respond to School Staff’s Concerns

Of course no one wants to receive a call about their child’s misbehavior. No parent wants to have a conference in which they find out that their child is failing or behind academically. This type of news is always difficult to hear. How parents respond will determine whether students go down a path of entitlement or a path of learning, growth, and improvement. As parents, we can choose to bulldoze obstacles, ignore them, or help our children navigate the challenge they are currently facing head on. The latter will be a path that will lead them to greater success down the road.

Options for Change

The protective instinct as a parent is strong. Our intuition tells us that we need to remove every obstacle and every inkling of potential friction from our kids’ lives. We want them to live a life of safety, comfort, and opportunity. Unfortunately, what we have seen in recent years is that the effort to eliminate the challenges our kids face has fostered a society where kids are less and less motivated and equipped to solve problems on their own. When kids encounter obstacles, it is vitally important that parents help children identify the issue clearly. Parents must support kids to manage their emotions while they develop a plan for moving forward.

Holding Our Kids Accountable

Often, the first step in this process is ownership. Kids need to honestly assess the situation and accept their role and responsibility. When the challenge is a low grade or poor student behavior, taking a step of ownership allows students to accept that they are the ones who need to take responsibility to move forward.

Unfortunately, when parents bulldoze or excuse children from the behavior (and especially when they place the blame elsewhere) kids miss out on the opportunity to problem-solve their way past barriers. Kids need parents to hold them accountable and to help them navigate the tricky waters of ownership and responsibility.

Partner with the School

The good news is that school staff is eager to partner with parents to walk with you down this road! Be on the lookout for workshop opportunities and chances for you and your child to get involved at school events. Also, when the school calls to discuss an issue with your child (i.e., grades or behavior) be sure to take a breath, listen, and partner with the school to map a pathway forward!

Student Report Cards

Parents try a wide range of strategies to ensure their children are putting in the effort needed to bring home a strong report card. Many parents offer incentives, special meals, trips, events, and even cash to get kids to put in the work for their grades. While these tactics may work in the short term, the real goal should be to build intrinsic motivation for kids to do their best. Research shows that these external rewards (also known as extrinsic motivation) may fall short in the long run.

Talk About Academic Performance

So, what will work? Research shows that increasing motivation requires a focus on long term outcomes, values, and goal setting. These are not fully developed skillsets in children. Parents need to step in and help kids along the way. Here are some things you can do to help build this motivation from home:

Don’t wait for report cards to discuss grades. Teaching kids the importance of grades and to always try their best are values that are developed through regular discussion about expectations. These are not only expectations for grades, but for all activities: sports, art, music, and school. As my mother used to say, “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.” Whether kids are cleaning their room, working on a project, or studying for a test, we have to constantly teach them to put their best foot forward.
Help kids set goals. Whether kids are knocking it out of the park or they are performing below your expectations, there is always room for growth. Help kids choose tangible steps for growth that will help get them to the next step. At times you will have to temper kids’ expectations and other times you will need to push a bit. Finding the sweet spot for steps towards growth is a process in and of itself. Kids need help to learn this important skill.
Continually remind kids that they are not alone. You are there with them to help along the way. They need to be reminded of this. Kids will need you to plan. They will need you when they succeed. Most importantly, they will need you when they fail. Kids need to know that you are in their corner and you are with them for the journey, no matter what.
Celebrate the wins! Yes, I realize this may sound contradictory to my opening comments, but it’s important to recognize growth and effort. I would advise against grandiose gestures. Be sure to talk up your child. Tell your child that you are proud of their accomplishments. Maybe, get some dessert to recognize their efforts and growth. If they put in the work, it’s important to be there to celebrate and to continue to encourage that effort. The words and tone you use with your child becomes their inner monologue. You have the opportunity to build an inner voice that encourages growth and effort, or one that is self-defeating. When you’re there to celebrate the wins and to offer encouragement in the losses, your kid will learn to speak encouragement to themselves without even realizing it!