A wonderful story of the important soft skills that are taught in the every day actions in the classroom:
Your companion video to this post is pretty profound in its reflection upon actual practice and our ability, as educators, to change and shift based upon this reflection. The fact that you went back to a student and apologized for your initial action and then reframed the discussion to be about mastery learning shows not only humility before students, but also an emphasis on doing what is right for kids.
As for the soft skills you are trying to impart, I think that your act of apology goes beyond “respect” or “empathy” to be about “equity” and “service”. I believe that a lot of the soft skills that you have listed can be built into the rituals and routines of a classroom, but the way in which you model our humanity and our ability to sustain one another is through adversity and difficult learning situations. It is what we do in the face of tough decisions that the best soft skills are taught.
via Soft skills aren’t innate… – Starr Sackstein, MJE, NBCT.
