Too Much Focus on Soft Skills?

I recently read a blog that lambasted high school English classes for inadequately preparing students for freshman English. Since I am new at blogging, I thought I starred the posting so I could go back to it later and write a comment. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find what I read, and now I can’t remember the details of the argument. What I do remember is the biggest problem seems to be that high schools are focusing more on “soft skills” than on academic skills. At the time, the post ticked me off…how dare college instructors complain about what I do? After all, I am doing the best I can with the baggage many students bring with them to school.

I would challenge college English instructors - especially those who work with freshman English - to take a couple of hours of their time and visit their local high schools to see the many issues high school teachers take on. Philosophically, I support standards-based teaching. When planning instruction for my classroom, I attempt to follow district mandates regarding instruction. Nevertheless, there never seems to be enough time to accomplish all I set out to do in August. My students come to school with their suitcases often filled with the harsh realities of today’s difficult world.

Just last week, one of my classes was working on a research project. In one class, before I realized what was going on, a student (student 1) went to the local detention center website to show her classmates a picture of her father. While still on the detention center website, she proceeded to show us a picture of her brother, an uncle, and a cousin. All have been arrested in the past year for various charges stemming from driving under the influence to assault and battery.

Another student (student 2) in this same class came to school really upset a few weeks back. I saw her in the hall and asked if she was okay. She began unloading her burden by saying her father wouldn’t be able to see her graduate. In her words, “My daddy’s been locked up again, and this time he’s not getting out for a long time." During the course of our conversation, I learned that her dad was a crack addict. Imagine being an 18-year-old who suddenly found out your dad, no matter bad is, won’t be able to attend your high school graduation.

Student 2 and I had a follow-up conversation a few days later, and one of her classmates (student 3) stopped by my room. Student 2 didn’t seem embarrassed about airing her family’s “dirty laundry” in front of student 3. Before long, student 3 shared with us that she too had a parent who was a crack addict. This conversation took place on a Wednesday morning, and student 3 said her mother left home on Sunday and hadn’t been seen since. Apparently, her mother’s disappearance for days at the time has happened quite often. I can’t imagine the heartache some of my students experience!

Another example of a student bringing baggage to school took place in December. Student 4 could not keep his head up in class one morning. Because I knew from his journal that he had drug issues when a 9th grader, I pulled him into my office to find out what was going on. When I asked him if he had been doing things to get himself into trouble, he politely said, “No, I was up all night taking care of my mom.” Of course, I had to ask, “Is she sick? Does she have the flu?” His candid response told me that his mom had gotten drunk at her office Christmas party, and she was throwing up all night. Student 4 was the only one at home, so the “responsibility” for cleaning up fell on the mom’s 18-year-old son. No wonder he couldn’t stay awake in class.

I have only mentioned four harsh realities my current students have recently faced, and I don’t believe for a second that these are isolated incidents. Some students are more open about the dysfunction in their lives while others remain silent. On any given day, more students than I am aware of come to school with hurts, fears, frustrations, and other things that prevent them from focusing on academics.

So as their English teacher, some days all I can do is give them an opportunity to read about, write about, or discuss what is on their minds and in their hearts. If that’s spending too much time on soft skills, then here’s my confession! And I don’t feel guilty about taking away from standards-based instruction to help students deal with the realities of their lives. I wish I could snap my friends, send troubled students to guidance for counseling, and have them return to class a few minutes later ready to absorb new things. Sadly, some days I would send away up to 1/3 of the class.

College instructors may be right about the focus on soft skills in many high schools. To defend my practices, I know that if my students are going to be successful in life that our schools are going to have to help students with soft skills such as a positive attitude, problem-solving skills, self-confidence, and flexibility. Too much focus on soft skills? Not for some of my students!

Creating Extraordinary Memories in the Snow

This weekend’s snowfall was wonderful! Because I have lived in coastal South Carolina my entire life, seeing snow on the ground is a rarity. Even when local meteorologists predict a chance of snow, I have learned over the years not to get my hopes up.

This past Friday morning, I still sounded cynical about the chances of snow when my 11th and 12th graders asked if I thought it was going to snow…as if I was an expert. The buzz around school all morning was the snow was coming our way. Even one of my colleagues, a native West Virginian, said she “smelled snow in the air.”

I kept checking the local forecast online, and by lunchtime, I began to get excited because it appeared that this time, IT WAS GOING TO SNOW IN CONWAY! I even stopped by the grocery store on the way home from school in the event it snowed so much I couldn’t get out Saturday.

By late afternoon, I was getting ready for my usual Friday night date with my daddy. Since my mom died 2 ½ years ago, my dad and I go out to dinner on Friday night and then to the grocery store to get a few things he needs each week. While I was spending time with my daddy, my husband and kids were helping my in-laws with a church dinner.

My 10-year-old daughter Molly was so excited that snow was on the way. The only other time it has snowed in her lifetime, she was too young to remember it. My 13-year-old son Jesse went on a ski trip last year, so at least he had played in the snow. I watched the 6:00 newscast to see when the snow was going to begin. By this time, snow was already falling in Florence, Marion, and Murrells Inlet. But wait a minute…shouldn’t it be snowing in Conway too? What was going on? According to Ed Piotrowski, it was snowing in Conway, but the air was so dry in the upper atmosphere that the snow was evaporating before it reached the ground. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!!

A thrilled Molly called me around 6:30 from her grandparents’ church to say it was snowing. She was about 7 miles away…still no snow where I was. My dad and I left for the grocery store around 7:15, and when we walked outside, I saw a spectacular sight…beautiful huge snowflakes dancing everywhere! The snow had arrived, and it was coming down hard. By the time by dad and I finished his grocery shopping a little while later, the snow was still coming down.

I experienced a bittersweet moment thinking that my mom always loved to see it snow…and the few times it snowed during my childhood, she always made snow cream …adding vanilla extract, sugar, and milk to fresh snow. For a few minutes, I ached for my mama. I thought about her grave at Hillcrest Cemetery. I thought how beautiful the red and white roses on her grave must look with snowflakes glistening on them.

By the time my husband Bryan and the kids got home around 9:00, our yard was covered with snow. All Molly could talk about was making a snow angel…she could hardly wait until morning. I stayed up until midnight, periodically walking outside to make sure the snow was still coming down. When I finally went to bed, I checked on my kids, and I saw that Jesse had left the blinds open in his room. He was still awake and lay in the bed watching the snow coming down right outside his window.

I love to sleep in on Saturday morning, but this didn’t happen on the morning after we received a whopping 5 inches of snow in our yard. I’m not sure who had more fun yesterday morning… my children or our dogs - a 5-year-old black lab and a 3-month-old brown lab. Together we built an “interesting” looking snowman…Molly made a snow angel...Jesse rolled around in the snow over and over with the dogs crawling all over him…we threw snowballs at one another…we laughed and played until Molly had to leave to go to a birthday party.

By mid-afternoon, we back doing ordinary tasks after spending a morning creating extraordinary memories. But one more special memory was made when Molly came home from the birthday party…my little snow angel ran over to our “interesting” looking snowman and gave him a big kiss…and it didn’t even matter to her that his head had fallen off by this time.

I’m Dreaming of a Tech-Savvy Classroom

Bing Crosby’s Christmas Classic “I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas” begins with the lines I'm dreaming of a white Christmas/Just like the ones I used to know. When I think of the kind of classroom I want for my children (an eighth grader and a fifth grader), I’m dreaming of a tech-savvy classroom unlike the ones I used to know … or the ones I currently know, including the high school classroom I’m in charge of.

I had a few extra minutes in one of my senior English classes this past week, so I asked my students to imagine they were starting over in 9th grade. Knowing what they know about today’s technology, I asked them to envision a classroom that would use the most up-to-date technology they had heard of … and this technology would be provided to them to use inside and outside school at no cost to them. Once they got beyond suggestions “to listen to music while working” and “to text whenever they wanted,” they started talking about the Apple’s new iPad … never mind that they had complained earlier in the week about the small size of the Netbooks we had been using.

As I was reading some of my new favorite blogs – I’m excited to be living the life of a blogger - earlier this weekend, I read a recent eSchool report, “Small-group collaboration: How Technology Facilitates Learning in Small Groups.” The article discussed ways high school students can use Google Apps to collaborate on a wiki, journal, or blog. Even though my current students didn’t suggest this kind of digital learning environment, I know them well enough to know they would thrive in a classroom that used learning tools such as these. (The report can be found at http://www.eschoolnews.com/2009/11/01/esn-special-report-small-group-collaboration/.) I chuckled when I read that in one school district, “All teacher professional development takes place online, and teachers take part in online collaborative work groups.” What would the administration at my school think if we couldn’t get together on Monday afternoons? LOL!

Again, while blogging, I encountered a great website (http://www.21stcenturyskills.org) that summarized and clarified the direction our schools should be going in now that we are actually living in the 21st century. “Student outcomes for the 21st are the skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century.” Included are information, media and technology skills such as information literacy, media literacy, and ICT literacy.

The more I read, the more I wanted to crawl under my laptop because even I get bored in my classroom sometimes … those times when I stay in my comfort zone and use those teaching methodologies that I have used for the past 27 years. If I am all about preparing my students for life beyond high school, them I am going to have to be a part of creating a tech-savvy classroom … in my own classroom and expect the same for my own children as they move on to middle and high school. So when my dream of a tech-savvy classroom comes true, every student will have his/her own hand-held device to facilitate learning.