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Career education options for working adults.
Ask yourself this question: “Do I like what I do for a living?” If you answered “no”, what are you doing about it? Maybe you have a “good” job, but it’s not very rewarding to you personally. Maybe you have job with good pay, but bad hours or worse –...
Goal Setting – Road Map to Success
Goal Setting & Research You can only set informed career goals if you acquire plenty of information about the career choices open to you. This will require research which can be conducted online or through a local library. You can also visit...
Got Defiant, Argumentative, Angry And Difficult Students? Win The Power Struggles Every Time
Here's the absolute, no-fail way to win every power struggle with every kid every time: Don't struggle for power. Think about it. The minute an adult wrestles with a kid for power, they've immediately lost. And, the younger the child, the more true...
Helping Troubled, Vulnerable, And Maladjusted Students Survive School Vacations
Here are some ideas to help you continue to make a difference for stressed, maladjusted, troubled, frightened, and vulnerable students during school vacations. These ideas are all taken from our web site, books, e-books and workshops.
*** Extend...
What is Failure Anyway?
Does it surprise you that only 400 cokes were sold the first year; Albert Einstein's Ph.D. dissertation was rejected; Henry Ford had two bankruptcies before his famous success; or Ulysses S. Grant was working as a handyman, written off as a failure,...
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Education Needs to Emphasize Soft Skills that Translate into Hard Cold Cash
No Child Left Behind mandates have school systems scrambling to improve teaching, update curriculum, improve teacher quality and analyze data between different populations just to name a few of the many actions each school is facing. Yet, given the recently released NationÂ’s Report Card, securing significant change is going to require some non-traditional solutions.
Maybe it is time for public education to take a lesson from corporate America who is just now also realizing the impact of soft skills on the bottom line. During the last two centuries, businesses focused on controlling their employees. The work environment was one of control where individual actions required a chain of approval that went vertically up, then vertically down. This type of management style produced excessive waste and failed to capitalize quickly when opportunities were presented.
According to annual Michigan State UniversityÂ’s national college employment survey, todayÂ’s knowledge worker must have the following skill sets:
Analytical ability
Communication including verbal and written
Decision Making
Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)
Leadership both individual and group
Personal attributes including work ethics, flexibility, initiative and motivation
Problem Solving
Team Building
Time Management
Yet, looking at most curriculums the focus is on cognitive content specific to the academic disciplines. The presumption is that this knowledge and the supporting skill sets as mentioned above will easily transfer to the workplace. Unfortunately, American business owners know that this is a fallacy because of information that is retrieved from such surveys conducted by Michigan State and other organizations.
For example, American students spend 12 plus years learning how to read and write. Yet if communication is more
non-verbal than verbal depending upon how much of Dr. Albert MehrabrianÂ’s research you believe, then most young people except for those in speech and debate have already been set up to fail because they donÂ’t understand that effective communication extends far beyond reading and writing.
Time management is another great example. Many adults have issues with time management or rather with better self management since you canÂ’t manage a constant that being time. However, the osmosis learning strategy once again rears its inefficient and ineffective head during the kindergarten through high school learning experience. Can you remember as a young student when you actually had a class on effective time management? In todayÂ’s classroom with the ever-expanding curriculum, would it not make more sense to actually instruct young people on such a valuable skill instead of leaving it to the osmosis learning strategy?
Developing and nurturing those critical soft skills are what employers know will translate into success for their employees and cold hard cash for them. If public education wants to be truly effective, then the leadership needs to get ahead of the ball and look at the desired end results. Practicing another 33 years of reform where nationally 17 year olds have not gained any reading improvement will absolutely remove us from being the number one world economic force.
Copyright 2005(c) Leanne Hoagland-Smith, www.processspecialist.com
About the author:
Leanne Hoagland-Smith, M.S. speaks nationally to student leadership and works with under performing schools to help them achieve world class status. If improving your school's performance is a goal, then visit www.processspecialist.comor email info@processspecialist.com or call 219.759.5601.
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