As a teacher of English I believe strongly in teaching soft skills to students: the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, interpersonal skills that characterise relationships with others. A huge part of this involves empathy: the capacity to understand what someone else is thinking, feeling, experiencing.
Working in an area of high deprivation, low aspiration and low socio-economic status families has its challenges – none so challenging as students’ ability to empathise with each other.
A prime example of this is the constant calling to attention of others’ weaknesses. When students are experiencing anxiety or panic, many other students will call this to the attention of large groups of individuals thus turning attention to an individual who clearly does not want to be the focus of a large number of individuals.
So often, in instances in which this occurs, teachers ignore this and try to move past it without so much as a comment on why this act is one of cruelty. In other cases, teachers will reprimand perpetrators with a glare or a stern word (treating that individual as if they are have done something wrong – without clarifying what they have done). How, then, is a child to know exactly why they have been reprimanded?
I strongly believe that by communicating clear social expectations in a non-aggressive manner to students, they are able to process why their actions may be harmful to others. The aggression shown by many teachers in the profession, perhaps as a way of instilling their authortity, allows students to react in a negative fashion towards them. Thus taking validity away from their argumentation. In fact, it is clearly observable that individuals learn best from people they like, trust and respect.
The best way to teach soft skills, then, is to model them. By explaining clearly and in a non-aggressive way, a teacher is modelling respect, kindness and empathy. By treating a child like they have done something terrible when in fact they have acted out of ignorance only serves to perpetuate a culture in which soft skills are not learnt and individuals do not grow spiritually. How can students learn to manage relationships if they have no role-models modelling these behaviours to them?
It is not simply the responsility of one person to raise a child, but the responsibility of every individual who is in a position to impact upon their lives. As adults, we are looked up to, regardless of whether we want to be or not, and it is our responsibility to model love, kindness, respect, empathy and all soft skills we wish to see in others.
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