The Positive Effects Of Teaching Life Skills In The Classroom

After viewing the district's website, it has came to my attention there is a vacant Life Skills Classroom Instructional Assistant position for next school year. I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg in 2007 with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Mathematics. I received my Elementary K – 6 Certification from Saint Vincent College in December of 2008. To further my education, I received my Mid-Level Mathematics 7-9 Certification in December of 2009. I would like to apply for the Life Skills Classroom Instructional Assistant position.

From my experience, as a student myself, I can relate to the impression of being unprepared for life after high school. During my high school years, many teachers do not clarify the lesson and expect students to understand the materials by a certain time. Learning only half a chapter and must learned two chapters by the next day. Some schools, however, only cover subjects

Teaching is not merely about methods used and material presented in the classroom, but about shaping students’ lives to help them construct a firm foundation for a successful future. I desire to teach my students basic life skills as well as challenge them to set and reach their highest goals.

William G. Tierney, Zoë B. Corwin, Julia E. Colyar, (2005), Preparing for colleges, pp 200-264

Mari-Jane Williams (2013) beautifully articulated the importance of teaching life skills to teenagers in an article written for the Washington Post titled “Life skills all teens should have before graduating from high school.” In the article Williams writes:

Northeast Life Skills Associates serves a community that are chemically dependent and has a variety of services to meet their clients’ needs.

Some of the goals of schooling and society in the United States are to develop students and citizens, who have high aspirations, believe in their capabilities, are hopeful they can realize their aspirations, and are optimistic about their future in general. Such characteristics are important because each leads to overall well-being (Bandura, 1977; Scheirer & Carver, 1985; Snyder et al., 1991), student achievement and higher graduation rates (Snyder et al., 2002) through a personal sense of urgency which allows them to take control of their life, challenge themselves, persevere through difficulties, and cope when obstacles arise (McBride, 2012).

Basic life skills are defined as psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges for everyday life (UNICEF). Taking that into consideration, high school students should be presented with the opportunity to take basic life skills courses within their high school career. In a way, it is ridiculous that basic life skills are not offered as a course in high school being that the students are there to get an education. It would be sensible if education was a combination of excelling in classes and life.

Although many students feel that they are not being taught practical life skills, they have actually been learning them all of their life. For example, one of the main things a student is taught how to do is how to learn; how to manage information, how apply that information being taught, critical thinking, and if they don’t know something, how to seek out that information. Students also receive

Minor, Dianna. "How Do We Help Each Student Succeed? - Whole Child Education." Whole Child Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.

|In this elective students explore a variety of texts that deal with aspects of growing up or transition into new phases of life and a |

Jason is another main character in the screenplay. He is good looking man with short brown hair and blue eyes. He is tall and well-fit. Jason prefers casual clothes, likes to do sports and is not into study as Jeanine. A lot of women find him handsome but he never cares about their attention. Jason was raised on the East Cost, US in the hard working family. Jason’s parents got divorced when he was 10 and his father moved out and barely visited the family. It is fair to say that Jason did not get enough of his father’s attention, even though they did meet and spend time together from time to time.

There is one thing for certain in this world, everyone wants to accomplish something in life and we want to recognize our full potential. In order to do this we must have some skills, and in this case it’s life skills. Life skills are a range of characteristics we

Regina Brett, a 90-year-old woman whose lessons have helped many people, shares some sage advice that everyone wants to hear. She lists 45 lessons for the world and the following are characteristics of those she considers to have a “well-lived” life: when one always remembers that even though life isn’t fair, it is still good; when one wastes no time hating others; when one doesn’t take themselves seriously; when one doesn’t feel the need to win every argument and agrees to disagree; when one starts saving for retirement with the first paycheck; when one makes peace with their past so it won’t ruin the future; when one is able to let others see them cry; when one doesn’t compare their life to others’; when one only has relationships that can

Education is part of children’s life not for their future, is part of a living experience and so the curriculum should cover a variety of real life situations.