SOFT SKILLS TRAINING GOES TO SCHOOL!
Middle school students at a New York City public school are learning what many business professionals tell me they wish someone had clued them into much sooner in their lives: SOFT SKILLS!
A six-week pilot program— Soft Skills 101: Lessons for Teens on Getting Ahead at School, at Work, and in Life–recently launched at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (TYWLS East Harlem). Approximately 60 students in the sixth and eighth grades are participating through June 19th.
The Young Women’s Leadership Network, which oversees TYWLS East Harlem, intends to offer my soft skills curriculum to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at the Network’s additional schools in New York City and Philadelphia and also at the Network affiliate schools in Texas and Illinois. I have plans in the works to also extend the program to public and private schools nationwide.
The curriculum focuses on seven soft skills areas:
- Controlling Yourself—self-management, understanding personal strengths and weaknesses
- Getting The Job Done—becoming organized, problem solving versus whining, integrity
- Communication—effective verbal and non-verbal communication, listening skills, manners and attire, asking questions
- Handling Differences—conflict resolution, dealing with criticism, finding commonalities, gossip
- Navigating Your Environment—a primer to organizational politics, understanding the environment in which you operate, learning that even at school life isn’t fair
- Bragging and Branding—the importance of self-promotion, how to promote yourself without seeming fake or coming across as the teacher’s pet
- Becoming A Leader In Your Own Life—effective leadership at home, in the community, in friendships; how to become a successful mentor
For me, the pilot is a dream come true! With an ever-growing body of research confirming the importance of soft skills competency, I’ve been pleading for years with educators—from grade school to graduate school—to include soft skills instruction in their core curricula.
In the real world, ignoring soft skills is the equivalent of sending kids into the woods without camping gear—or at least with nothing but a sleeping bag. A lack of soft skills competency is the number one complaint I hear from companies today about the young people they hire. This same lack is also cited as a major reason for firing an employee.
Based on my book, The Hard Truth About Soft Skills—Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner (February 2008, Collins), Soft Skills 101 was developed and written by Emily Wylie in collaboration with Molly Hamaker and myself. The curriculum is geared to the mindset and challenges faced by adolescents in their daily lives. For example, students learn how to disagree without losing a friendship and how to communicate effectively so they can get what they want—even from difficult people—using the same techniques they will need one day when dealing with co-workers or a challenging boss.
Each spring, for several years, I’ve presented my BRAG! Connections workshop at TYWLS East Harlem. During the workshop, I teach the entire junior class self promotion and networking skills. “Soft Skills 101 is another innovative program that will challenge and prepare our students to be successful in all facets of life,” says the Network’s founder, Ann Tisch.
Wylie, who has taught in New York City Public schools for over a decade, including at TYWLS East Harlem where she currently works, received her teacher training and master’s in education at Brown University. Along with teaching, Wylie is a writer and commentator on education and parenting issues for National Public Radio’s evening news show, All Things Considered.
Hamaker, a business development consultant, is also a credentialed school psychologist who has previously worked with students at all economic and grade levels in California.
Following the pilot, I hope to develop additional curriculum units specifically for high school students. Plans are also underway for a companion website, where I can conduct webcasts for the students and where they can access interactive exercises to further hone their soft skills.
For more information, contact me at info@peggyklaus.com
More About Emily Wylie
At The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem, Wylie has served as English Department head, written curricula (
Eighth Grade Humanities; Literature of Immigration Eleventh Grade English Literature Arts [ELA]
; Senior Writing by Women: Creative Writing; Race, Class, and Gender in American Literature; AP English Literature), begun the AP program in the school, conducted countless workshops for her peers, and watched her students attain the school’s highest-ever ELA scores for the New York State Regents Exams.
Along with teaching, Wylie has built a career as a writer and commentator for National Public Radio’s evening news show All Things Considered on a variety topics, including teaching, education, and inner city life; girls and gender roles; and parenting.
Educators from Brown University—where she received her master’s degree in education—are taught to be socially-conscious activists, which is how Wylie ended up in the Bronx for her first teaching job, leading to a career in the inner city. While receiving her undergraduate degree at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, she was inspired by the faculty to become a teacher herself. Married and the mother of a three-year-old boy, Wylie lives in New York City.
More About Molly Hamaker
Hamaker has an M.A. and an Ed.S. in Educational Psychology from Chapman University. During 20 years of business development consulting, she has advised a variety of educational, nonprofit, and for-profit enterprises in the areas of strategic planning, start-up, program creation, marketing, and more.
Hamaker has collaborated on a variety of non-fiction book projects with her clients, including both of Klaus’s books. She formerly served as associate director of The Center for Living Democracy (CLD), a nonprofit organization—founded by acclaimed social-change activist and author Frances Moore Lappé—dedicated to increasing citizen involvement in public problem solving. During her tenure at CLD, Hamaker conducted extensive research on school reform. For two decades, she was an active participant in the public schools her four children attended in Walnut, Creek, California, where she and her husband reside.
More About The Young Women’s Leadership Network
The Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN) is a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization established in 1998 to support the work of two programs: The Young Women’s Leadership Schools (TYWLS) and CollegeBound Initiative (CBI). The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (TYWLS, East Harlem), opened in 1996, and was the nation’s first single-sex public school to open in more than 30 years. TYWLS, East Harlem continues to make history and headlines preparing low-income students of color with an outstanding college-prep education, offering a personalized, dynamic, hands-on learning environment where girls can thrive academically. Today the school serves 420 girls in grades six through twelve, 57 percent of whom are Latina and 35 percent of whom are African American. While 85 percent of the students at TYWLS East Harlem live below the poverty line, 100 percent of its graduates are accepted to college. This school is the model of success for YWLN’s network of all-girls’ public schools and for many other single-sex public schools across the United States. For more information please visit
www.ywlnetwork.org or
www.tywls.org.
