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Learning life-skills

Billw@projectAcademy.org

Enhancing your life-skills:  ... Project Academy provides people who are re-entering the work force by learning life-skills for college or career entry.  We also offer after-school and pre-employment programs that build community and company value.

 

We are a Massachusetts 501( C ) 3 non-profit corporation dedicated to supporting veteran service personal and other

 workers to learn skills that will help them succeed in a career or additional schooling (college and career readiness (CCR ))

 

   

Overview

Need to think of how should  the project regarding the life-skill learning.

 

How are the Life Skills integrated into the project?

 

 

Essential Questions

  • 1.     How do we insure that the students pick up and embrace the life-skills that are part of the project?

  • 2.     What does cognitively and repetitive mean in learning life-skills.

  • 3.     Do we just pick a few ones before the project starts?

 

Students must be cognitively aware of skills they are using

 

 

In problem-based learning, beside solving the community/ world problem, “learning along the way” is also a goal of the work. Students must be cognitively aware of skills they are using.

Tasks

 

How do we re-enforce the learning of these skills?... Writing in a book, creating a poster, team play about the skill?

 

Prioritize the life-skills into musts and wants, put them in categories (business, society, personal), 

 

Separate skills for Middle school, High school

 

Get students to Collaboration on their learning life skills

 

“well-being can be considered a life skill. If you practice, you can actually get better at it.” By learning and regularly practicing skills that promote positive emotions, you can become a happier and healthier person. Jane Brody

 

Personal/ Social Development:

Ethical decision making

Civic engagement

Planning/ Goal-setting

Self-control

Character traits

Social intelligence

Values /community

Team work

 

 

  

 

How are we going to get the students engaged in life-skill learning?
Link Game
Link Long term learning ... 4 steps
Training process:

 

Life-skills used during this process

  • Ice Breaker
  • Forming a learning team  ... like a sports/music team
  • Finding a community/world problem to solve
  • Research and developing requirements to manage
  • Problem solving
  • Testing and reflection
  • Public reporting

 

Ownership Mind-set Think like an owner
Cultural engineering mind-set Provide leadership & management of a   project
Project Academy culture How does Project Academy operate?
Skills integrating into the learning 10 Major Life Skills and their integration
Training Resources
Job hunting skills Skills used in business
Infusing thinking skills  
 

Life-Skills ...Students become cognitively aware of their life skills while  doing activities:

 

From our experiences in business & education, we have created a curriculum that sifted out the manual part of work and created thinking employees with unique mindset thinking and life-skills to be productive in your organization.  These are the people that AI will be difficult to replace.

 

• Attitude (positive attitude, focus, emotions, flexible, moral leadership )

• Social & emotional learning ( character developmentempathy, responsibility, self-esteem, flexibility, self-disipline )

• Team-work ( charter, respect, values, listening, trust, diversity, culture, ) ... working like a sports team

• Problem-solving ( creative & critical thinking, decisions, planning, curiosity, reflection  )

• Personal skills (financial literacy,  time managementcommunication( verbal & non-verbal,
goal setting)

• Business literacy (quality, processes, matrices, reporting, leadership, judgment, customer focus, info. mapping )

  • Key individual interface  Email, Social networking, YouTube, Self-branding skills
    (Who you are ), Networking

Sacred Skills

Sacred thoughts

Elements

Wisdom: good decisions and taking the path that provides value to all (society)

Thinking skills (creative, critical, system), SEL learning, Decision making, Reflection, Innovation

Community: People and relationships count

Listening skills, communication skills, teamwork, Interpersonal skills, Relationship, Measurements

Social justice:  leaving the world a better place than you found it

Problem solving skills, positive outlook, Curiosity, Process skills, Executive functions 

Purpose: Sense of direction that you achieve,  the goals you set

Put first things first,  Pro-active outlook, Begin with the ends in mind, and Win-win for all, Time-management,  Project planning  

 
Major skills in each process:

Process

Skills

Ice breaker/ Intro.

Greeting skills, Eye contact, Non-verbal skills, Positive attitude 

 

 

Forming the team

Diversity, Values of a culture, Time management Listening skills, Collaboration, Character development, Negotiation

 

 

Picking the project

Team work, Handling adversity

Project planning, Scheduling

   
Research & planning Measurements, Goal setting, Scheduling

 

 

Problem solving

Thinking skills. Self-reflection

Problem-solving structure, Brain-storming,

Decision making, Sorting

 

 

Testing & writing

Feedback, Iterations, Communication (without phones)

Elevator pitch,

 

 

Public dialogue/ Celebration

Meta-cognition,

Presentation skills, Communications, Info-mapping 

 

 

Grouping of skills and discussion:

  Skill Grouping

Description

Comments

Questioning To understand, draw out and learn Socrates was one of the greatest educators who taught by asking questions and thus drawing out (as 'ex duco', meaning to 'lead out', which is the root of 'education') answers from his pupils.
Communications

 

lessons

verbal, non-verbal and listening  
Decision making Kepner-Trego  

Study skills

 

teach students how to Study skills:

 

www.studyskills.com

  •  manage time

  •  be organized

  •  improve reading comprehension

  •  listen effectively

  • take more comprehensive notes

  • communicate more effectively in written and oral expression

During the meeting:

 

  • Listening, communicating and expression

  • Prepare for presentations

  • Planning process

  • Scheduling processes

Social & Emotional Learning Character development, Empathy. Responsibility, Self-esteem  social rules, effective listening, people watching, social self-efficacy, image management 

Innovation

Improvement, invent, advance

During reflection,  How can I make a process better?

 

Entrepreneurship

Creating value where there was none!

 During reflection.

Learning from failure

 

This reminds me of IDEO’s philosophy of “fail early and often to succeed at the end”.

Not success, dissatisfaction

 

Rapid prototyping solutions and seeing what works....Dyson argues that there is more we can learn from failures than from successes. Failure is a dress rehearsal for success. I am always struck by James Dyson’s claim that he built 5,127 prototypes before he got it right.

Risk taking/ Stretch goals

Possibility, Chance

Probability

Strive for more innovative solutions, Shaping process

 

Planning

Arrangement, scheduling, forecasting

Developing plan for World project

 

Measurements/ feedback

Extent, coverage, range

Setting learning goals, How do we validate?

Balanced scorecard used in financial measurements

 

Process methods

Method, course of action, procedure

Problem solving process, Decision process,

Use tools

 

Continuous improvement/ Quality

Value, worth, excellence

Continue to make the process or results better

Quality plan review

 

Character traits

http://character.org/

Personality,

defines “character” comprehensively to include thinking, feeling, and doing

 

Thinking skills

Thinking does not occur spontaneously but must be evoked by problems and questions or by some perplexity; confusion or doubt … John Dewey

 

6-Hats -Collaborative spirit  

What the term refers to is the human capacity to think in conscious ways to achieve certain purposes. Use of the mind to form thoughts, to reason, to reflect.

Problem solving process,

Wall hanging, Done thru facilitation  

  • Creative thinking

  • Critical thinking

  • Meta-cognitive reflection

  • Questioning

  • System thinking

Time management  …MIT (Most important Task)

Point in time, control, schedule  MIT first on list, Prioritize tasks

 

Setting schedule, follow it

Part of planning process

Financial literacy

Monetary, Economic, Fiscal,

Mastery, Knowledge

  • Planning, cost structure

  • Become a critical consumer, loans

  • Risk management

  • Income

  • Money management

  • Planning, saving and investing

  • Happiness quotient ... How do you measure it?

Flowchart: Alternate Process: Focused-Simplified 
Tailored to the organization 
Starter projects
Flowchart: Alternate Process: Present Teams- Problem solving

Curved Down Arrow: Feedback

Flowchart: Alternate Process: Focused-Simplified 
Tailored to the organization 
Starter projects
Flowchart: Alternate Process: Present Teams- Problem solving

Curved Down Arrow: Feedback

Flowchart: Alternate Process: Focused-Simplified 
Tailored to the organization 
Starter projects
 Class room activities: Our instruction is based on project based learning vs "caulk & talk" learning.  Examples of the skills learning:

 

Uniqueness of our training

Our approach is unique in that it brings together the needs of both sides in the workplace. Our program shows the new trainees how that can interface with the companies’ values while building their strengths to become a needed employee or owner.  The company gets an employee with a culture and values that fit nicely into a corporate culture.

The following are our Uniqueness:

The program focuses on teaching life-skills to create a well-rounded individual who will fit into the work environment.  It uses the concept of mindset thinking around the following:

·        Ownership mindset ... Think like an owner

·        Cultural Engineering mindset ... Provide leadership & management of a   project

·        Growth mindset  ...Your brain is like a muscle, use it or lose it

·        Team mindset ... To be successful. need to work together

·         Brand mindset ... Who are you and how to show the world 

·         Life skills … Students become cognitively aware of their life skills while doing activities

 

Project based learning activitiesSelf-direct learning

o   Getting to know each other

o   Team creation ,,, learning & building a culture

o   Picking a problem to work on

o   Problem solving

o   Public reporting

 From our experiences in business & education, we have created a curriculum that sifted out the manual part of work and created thinking employees with unique mindset thinking and life-skills to be productive in your organization.  These are the people that AI will be difficult to replace.

Training Flow map:

 

Articles:

What Are 21st Century Skills?

Growth of Life-Skills
Tying into companies & organizations that are looking for skill-based training