When I was conducting an interview once, a teacher candidate shared with me that when she taught Kindergarten, she always asked her parents at Back to School Night to write down the answer to the question, “What do you want your children to be when they grow up?”

Some parents dove right into the task.  Others had to sit and reflect for a bit.

When it came time for sharing with each other, everyone would wait to see how their responses compared.  The “wants for the future” would then roll out - I want my child to be caring, reflective, nice, resilient, trustworthy.  I want my child to love their family.  To prioritize work, but not too much.  To have balance.  To enjoy nature.  To be healthy.  To be happy.  To find the right partner.  To be the right partner.  To have friends.  To be a friend.  I want my child to speak up for themself.  But to also listen to others. To have faith.  To have hope.  To be curious.  To be bold.  To not fear failure.

Sure, there was the occasional, “I want my child to be a (insert career…doctor, lawyer, Taylor Swift impersonator),” but for the most part, parents talked about traits they hoped their child would one day display. 

This teacher would then ask those in the room if they noticed what their lists didn’t include.  No list included “Ability to tell colleagues at work that they were the first to learn to read,” or “Knowledge of how to calculate the volume of a rectangular prism,” or “Earned Straight A’s in Middle School.”

The parents quickly understood where she was going.  Coincidentally, she could then share, Kindergarten was going to be the perfect fit for their hopes.  She was going to prioritize all the stuff the parents wanted for their children.

So what happens along the way?  Why over the years do the different elements of the school day start to take on unexpected value?  Most schools today share marks for academic learning and life learning.  This life learning comes under different names.  They are sometimes called Work Habits or Learning Behaviors or Approaches to Learning or Learner Attributes or Social-Emotional Skills.  We call them Learning Habits.   

If every school prioritizes them, and if they represent what we want for our children when they become adults, why do we sometimes struggle to see Learning Habits as equal to, if not more important than, content and skill achievement marks? 

What’s the glitch that makes us, and in turn, our children, stop forgetting about what will be truly important in the future, and instead solely prioritize academic marks? 

The adult work world gives us countless reminders that it’s these Soft Skills that make all the difference.  At a recent American Chamber of Commerce Vision 2050 discussion, one of the panelists said that companies are calling these “Power Skills” the critical difference makers, the skills that separate humans from machines, the skills that make employees marketable, the skills that make them indispensable to a company.

I recently had a first hand encounter with the power of the “Power Skills.”  I was having a conversation with a budding 20-something who had recently graduated from university.  He had just entered the job market,  and for any of you familiar with 20-somethings in the job market right now, it’s not the most comfortable place to find yourself.

He had taken a temporary retail job selling golf clubs and camping gear while he scoured the US West for an entry level position in architecture.  The entry level jobs were few, and inevitably all his competitors for spots had more experience than him.  It was hard to be hopeful.

And then he got the job.  The perfect job.  I asked him what put him over the hump.  Why do you think you got hired?  

He then shared with me the story of the interview.  On the way back to the interview room, he made mental notes of little trinkets and personal items displayed on employees’ desks.  These notes became conversation starters for connecting with the people in the room - one person’s love of gaming, another’s birth place in Australia, another’s former sports glory.  This interview then turned into a conversation.   They talked about his travels, what he’d learned from the countries and cultures where he’d lived, where he’d visited.  They’d even opened up Google Maps on their phones and started sharing common spots across the globe they’d seen.  Returning to the interview, they then talked about his academic story, the hiccups and hurdles that led to struggles, and the recovery and resilience needed to learn how to climb out of holes.  They barely mentioned his university classes, but instead focused on how he spent his time outside of class, building an architecture club and bringing it to his school and then the nearby community.

The university degree was just the foot that got him in the door.

It was his personality and his story that kept the door open.

It was the Power Skills, the Learning Habits that got him the job.

And for him, he had validation.  Validation that the stuff that his parents and teachers had told him for years would one day matter, was…actually…the stuff that mattered.

So as we wonder next time, how we should talk with our children, what topics we should prioritize, we’ll need to take some time to ensure we’ve first answered the most important question of all, “What do we want our children to be when they grow up?”  

by Eric Burnett

MS/HS Principal