1. Being Purposeful with Soft Skills
Tom Hall
Consultant: Casey McCormick

2. Who were your favorite teachers from school
Who were your favorite teachers from school? What do you remember most about them?

3. What are “Soft Skills?”
Covers a lot of ground and has had a lot of other names over the years.
Grover Whitehurst (2016) says they include, “dispositions, skills, traits, and abilities… emotional intelligence, social and emotional learning, personal qualities, character, virtue, non-cognitive skills, 21st century skills, and so on”

4. What are “Soft Skills?”
The definition of soft skills is so vast it includes a lot of things that are not skills.
Ex. Kindness/empathy are “soft skills” but not technically skills.
The definition is also vague because the word soft can convey weakness, when in fact included abilities are strengths.
Ex. The ability to compromise is a strength, not a weakness.

5. What are “Soft Skills?”
A working definition for this session: Specific actions with a purpose of fostering relationships, character, and/or productivity.
Key phrase is “with a purpose.”
Generic examples in your teaching:
What you do to connect with students.
How you encourage character, responsibility, confidence, leadership, and executive functioning.
Structuring lessons for student creativity, choice, etc.

6. What are “Soft Skills?” Specific examples in your teaching:
“Get to know you” activities
Praise/complimenting students
Individual conversations
Enthusiasm/Tone of Voice
Modeling character traits
How we question students and react to their responses
Framework(s) for discussions and group work

7. I already do that stuff. Why am I sitting in this session?
What you might be thinking right now.

8. How purposeful are you with these things ? What are your intentions?
Specific examples in your teaching:
“Get to know you” activities during the start of the year
Ongoing activities/actions to get to know students
Praise/complimenting students for leadership, creativity, responsibility, etc.
Individual conversations about successes or concerns
Genuine enthusiasm for content/learning
Modeling character traits
How we question students and react to their responses
Framework(s) for discussions and group work

9. How purposeful are you with these things ? What are your intentions?
“Solid” Soft Skills
“Squishy” Soft Skills
“Get to know you” activities during the start of the year
How we question students and react to their responses
Framework(s) for discussions and group work
Ongoing activities/actions to get to know students
Praise/complimenting students for leadership, creativity, responsibility, etc.
Individual conversations about successes or concerns
Genuine enthusiasm for content/learning
Modeling character traits

10. Being Purposeful

11. Being Purposeful
Choose specific actions relating to socioemotional ability or character (fall into the category of “soft skills”).
Be disciplined in making sure that specific action was occurring in my teaching on a regular basis.
Identify clear intentions for the action that are related to student learning.
Most importantly: Choose actions that are fit my character, yet challenge me to grow in character as well.

12. Individual conversations
I picked 5 students (usually 1 per class) that I made sure to have a conversation with during a period.
Who did well with yesterday’s activities, who needed some help, who did something commendable, or just students I hadn’t spoken to individually in a couple days.
My intentions:
Get to know students more
Be more methodical in how I circulate during activities and offer help
Model how to balance social conversation and productivity

13. Praise/Compliments
I planned to verbally compliment at least 3 students each day.
THIS WAS HARD FOR ME TO DO AT FIRST!
My intentions:
Encourage future behavior, leadership, and participation
Make gratitude more common in my speech and in the speech of my students
“Unexpressed gratitude can be interpreted as a person being ungrateful” – Todd Clark

14. Ongoing get to know you/character
I planned to have students complete a written reflection about character at least once per unit.
I provided written feedback to these reflections.
I reacted to something specific in their writings
I sometimes posed additional questions/noted similar stories from my life
I ended every response with thank you.
My Intentions:
Promoting metacognition and perspective taking
Gratitude
Create time/space for students to voice concerns and emotions in a healthy way

16. How I react to student responses
Increased wait time
Acknowledge participation
Prompt more detail
My intentions:
Create time to think
Value process over product
Help students learn the role of silence in speech

17. Frameworks for group work.
Outlined what I expected at beginning of the year
As year progressed, I switched to having students write down 3 things they value most about group work.
My intentions:
Students take ownership of productivity
Create time to share values and identify common goals/values
Give students more responsibility to make groups equitable and caring.
I become one of many people with authority in the room.

18. Most common goals:
Helping/getting help
Teamwork
Talking about problems.

19. Unexpected benefits/findings
These “soft” skills are just as hard as other aspects of teaching, even if it’s hard to quantify their impact.
I was more intentional about all the aspects of my teaching
Time for students to think, work, and share took increasing importance in my planning
I was able to better anticipate student difficulties with content and student interest in concepts
Compliments became more natural in conversations with students and coworkers

20. Resources
Whitehurst, G. J. (2016). Hard thinking on soft skills. Evidence Speaks Reports, 1 (14). Retrieved from EBSCO Academic Search Premier database.
Claxton, G., Costa, A. L., and Kallick, B. (2016). Hard thinking about soft skills. Educational Leadership, Retrieved from EBSCO Academic Search Premier database.
Palmer, P. J. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons