Problem Solving; Essential Life Skills
Over the past month in Lights Academy I have been doing problem solving work. The problem I was working towards solving was teenagers not knowing essential life skills -such as paying taxes- when they graduate high school and don't live under their parents wings anymore. I had done some research on my problem, but by the end of the actual project work I hadn't really felt like I had researched enough aspects of the problem, and I hadn't come up with a set solution. I was given another opportunity to finish up my problem solving when my teacher proposed a short-term project that would last about two weeks, and you could use this short-term project time to answer a new driving question or to carry on an old one. Here is my proposal plan for the short-term project, and following the proposal will be the project work I put in during the two weeks.
Driving Question; For teenagers, how important are real life skills such as writing checks, doing taxes, etc.?
For my short-term project proposal I am going to be extending research from my problem solving project. My problem solving project was on teaching teenagers life skills that schools don't teach, such as banking, voting, paying rent, applying for loans, writing check, etc. I would like to;
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As I proceeded with this problem solving, I thought of something that might be useful. An old teacher of mine taught me that the first act of the mind is understanding. Basically, what this means is that before you can have an intelligent conversation with someone, you need to understand their terms... you need to know the definitions of the words they are using. So I thought defining some of the possibly muddled terms that I either have used or will be using regularly in my work, may be a good idea. (Definitions from dictionary.com)
Real world; The realm of practical or actual experience, as opposed to the abstract, theoretical, or idealized sphere of the classroom, laboratory,etc.
Life skills: The ability to cope with stresses and challenges of daily life, esp. skills in communication and literacy, decision-making, occupational requirements,problem-solving, time management and planning
OK, now that we have that figured out, we can talk. As I read through different resources, I began identifying all the different skills or values needed to survive once out of high school or even college. Some of the websites I used focused more on general life skills, such as people skills or managing a house, while others focused more on quite specific life skills, like knowing how to balance your checkbook, or how change the oil in your car.
So as I researched more about life skills and looked at different resources and points of view, I got some pretty valuable insights and thoughts about the solution to this problem. Many blogs have been written about the problems of teenagers not knowing essential life skills when they get out of high school, and this is the trend I noticed as the identified source of the problem and proposed solution to this problem;
It is the public school system's fault that a large percentage of teenagers are not able to stay afloat in the real world. Public schools base their learning off of core knowledge in math, science, reading/writing, and history, but there are rarely, if ever, classes devoted solely to real world skills or even classes that have the teaching of these skills integrated into them. Whether you go to college or not, teenagers will need these skills, so high schools should teach them since everyone is required to go to high school.
So as I explored internet resources, they all had a sort of compilation of the most important life skills teenagers need once out of high school. Some websites had very specific lists of what skills need to be taught to teenagers, while other lists had more broad lists of what teenagers need. I took bits of each of them and formed a list of more specific life skills that I think are most important for teenagers to know once they enter the real world.
But wait... What am I basing the word important off of? Important to what exactly... important to success? If so, then what is my definition of success? Well, like I said before, understanding is important. I decided to look up what dictionary.com said success meant. There were 3 definitions;
So dictionary.com thinks that success means attaining wealth or goals, and I believe that pretty much the whole world would agree with that… but I don’t. I think that in the aspect of what we are talking about here, success means something totally different. Let me show you what I mean.
So in general, if you are successful in life it means that you have obtained wealth and you have a nice car, a nice home, and plenty of money in your bank account. Or even in sports, let’s say soccer, if you are successful in a soccer game it means that you have attained your goals, which is to gain points through putting the soccer ball in the net, and you did that more times than the opposing team. But I think that to be successful as a young man or woman who is in the real world for the first time, it simply means that you didn’t fail. You see, in category of what we are talking about, I don’t think that someone out of highschool or college who is in the real world for the first time needs to obtain wealth or even their goals necessarily… I just think that they need to be able to stay afloat. I know what you might be thinking “What if that young persons goal is to just stay afloat in the real world?”
Well who knows, you might be right, that may be that persons only goal that the time being… but I think that would be rare among student who have just left high school or even college. Most students who are finally leaving their parents house for the first time to live on their own, or a college student is finally ready to settle down and get a sturdy job after working hard for a degree, their ambitions are through the roof. They aren’t usually extremely reasonable when it comes to setting goals because all they want to do is obtain wealth and their high standard goals.
Now that I’ve explained to you how I am using the word success, I can give you my list of the attributes that are most important to success in the real world;
Money Skills - Overall monetary skills are extremely important. Being able to manage money so that there is enough income to pay rent/bills, buy groceries, buy gasoline, and make other necessary purchases, all while keeping a good amount of it in savings. This also includes keeping a balanced checkbook and managing a debt or credit card.
House Skills - House skills are important to taking care of an apartment or home. These include being able to keep everything tidy, so vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes, sweeping, etc. It also means making sure the house is in good shape, so no broken furnaces, doors, windows, or other appliances. Being able to keep a house in good shape and clean will help tremendously. I can tell you firsthand that when things are cluttered in my house I do not function nearly as well, so this will have a ripple effect on the rest of the skills.
Time-Management Skills - This is a huge one. When you are able to manage your time well, you can get a lot more done in a lot less time, while avoiding stress. This will give a good feeling about what you have accomplished, and will keep you motivated to do it again, while bad time management will make you stressed and keep you from getting into the habit of managing time well. It will end up becoming a vicious cycle that you cannot escape.
Cooking Skills - This kinda goes with housing skills, but being able to cook good and healthy meals will have a big effect on the rest of your life.
Transportation Skills - Being able to get from place to place is extremely important. If you have a car, making sure the gas tank is filled, knowing how to repair a flat tire, or change the oil, etc, are all very important skills to know. If you don’t have a car, knowing the bus, tram, or train schedule is a good idea.
People Skills - Being able to interact with people of all ages is quite important. Making connections with strangers can come in handy later when you need a favor. Even just having the ability to socialize well with others can end up helping you make friends, which can help to deal with the loneliness of living alone. Another time this may be an important skill is during a job interview. If you have good people skills, take social cues, and are polite, you can make quite the impression, which can land you the job you’ve been needing or wanting.
These are essentially all the skills need to stay afloat in the real world. So how are these to be taught? Most people think that schools should do this, but can a teacher really teach a classroom of thirty kids how to have people skills or how to manage their time well? I think that schools can, and definitely should incorporate the learning of some of these skills to kids, such as adding something into math classes about writing checks, managing a savings and checking account, balancing a checkbook, paying rent, and other financial things. I also think that making a class where you learn how to take good care of a car would be a good idea (maybe that could be added into Drivers Ed classes). And I know that there already are classes such as Home Ed where you learn to cook and do other things. But what about the more characteristic things like people skills or time management skills? Can those be taught by schools? I don’t believe so. I think that those are entirely up to the parents. I look at all the kids who are doing extremely well in school, and all of them have good time-management skills, which I believe sprouted from habits the parents put them in as young children. And kids with really good people skills have parents who are very social and pushed the kids at a young age to go out of their comfort zone and socialize with adults as well as their peers. Kids who are very well-mannered and polite have parents who forced them to act politely at the dinner table and be considerate of other people. So how can we make these skills more common-place among young adults? We certainly cannot force the parents, who are “slacking” so-to-speak, to make their kids well behaved and good time managers. Well the more and more I read, the more I thought about what the solution would be. I also began thinking about this new found sub-problem on a larger scale. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that no matter how important the skills above may be, the most important skills of all time are more of characteristics rather than taught skills. I began thinking of skills that teenagers need in the real world that may not be taught skills exactly. For example, a teenager who is moving out of their parents house won't only need skills such as managing rent payments and knowing how to maintain a budget for grocery shopping, but they will need more characteristic skills such as adaptability, etc. So I proceeded to make a list of general characteristics that cannot necessarily be taught, along with their definition and my explanation.
This list was short but I believe that these four characteristics are very important to stay alive and well in the real world. But what about the problem? How are these going to be taught to teenagers? I think that schools can teach the more specific characteristics, and I think that they are currently working to do this, but what about these characteristics? Can schools teach these? I think not. I think it is entirely up to the parents to teach their children these skills, in which case there is not much to do put put our work out there and hope the parents are willing to look for help and teach their children these vital skills.
Source(s);
Guise, Stephen. "How School Trains Us To Fail In The Real World." Deep Existence. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.
Williams, Mary-Jane. "Life Skills All Teens Should Have Before graduating from High School." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 23 Jan. 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.
Driving Question; For teenagers, how important are real life skills such as writing checks, doing taxes, etc.?
For my short-term project proposal I am going to be extending research from my problem solving project. My problem solving project was on teaching teenagers life skills that schools don't teach, such as banking, voting, paying rent, applying for loans, writing check, etc. I would like to;
- Research a few more different avenues of this driving question.
- Talk to at least one expert on the subject.
- Determine how I would like to resolve this problem.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As I proceeded with this problem solving, I thought of something that might be useful. An old teacher of mine taught me that the first act of the mind is understanding. Basically, what this means is that before you can have an intelligent conversation with someone, you need to understand their terms... you need to know the definitions of the words they are using. So I thought defining some of the possibly muddled terms that I either have used or will be using regularly in my work, may be a good idea. (Definitions from dictionary.com)
Real world; The realm of practical or actual experience, as opposed to the abstract, theoretical, or idealized sphere of the classroom, laboratory,etc.
Life skills: The ability to cope with stresses and challenges of daily life, esp. skills in communication and literacy, decision-making, occupational requirements,problem-solving, time management and planning
OK, now that we have that figured out, we can talk. As I read through different resources, I began identifying all the different skills or values needed to survive once out of high school or even college. Some of the websites I used focused more on general life skills, such as people skills or managing a house, while others focused more on quite specific life skills, like knowing how to balance your checkbook, or how change the oil in your car.
So as I researched more about life skills and looked at different resources and points of view, I got some pretty valuable insights and thoughts about the solution to this problem. Many blogs have been written about the problems of teenagers not knowing essential life skills when they get out of high school, and this is the trend I noticed as the identified source of the problem and proposed solution to this problem;
It is the public school system's fault that a large percentage of teenagers are not able to stay afloat in the real world. Public schools base their learning off of core knowledge in math, science, reading/writing, and history, but there are rarely, if ever, classes devoted solely to real world skills or even classes that have the teaching of these skills integrated into them. Whether you go to college or not, teenagers will need these skills, so high schools should teach them since everyone is required to go to high school.
So as I explored internet resources, they all had a sort of compilation of the most important life skills teenagers need once out of high school. Some websites had very specific lists of what skills need to be taught to teenagers, while other lists had more broad lists of what teenagers need. I took bits of each of them and formed a list of more specific life skills that I think are most important for teenagers to know once they enter the real world.
But wait... What am I basing the word important off of? Important to what exactly... important to success? If so, then what is my definition of success? Well, like I said before, understanding is important. I decided to look up what dictionary.com said success meant. There were 3 definitions;
- the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
- a performance or achievement that is marked by success, as by the attainment of honors.
- a person or thing that has had success, as measured by attainment of goals, wealth, etc.
So dictionary.com thinks that success means attaining wealth or goals, and I believe that pretty much the whole world would agree with that… but I don’t. I think that in the aspect of what we are talking about here, success means something totally different. Let me show you what I mean.
So in general, if you are successful in life it means that you have obtained wealth and you have a nice car, a nice home, and plenty of money in your bank account. Or even in sports, let’s say soccer, if you are successful in a soccer game it means that you have attained your goals, which is to gain points through putting the soccer ball in the net, and you did that more times than the opposing team. But I think that to be successful as a young man or woman who is in the real world for the first time, it simply means that you didn’t fail. You see, in category of what we are talking about, I don’t think that someone out of highschool or college who is in the real world for the first time needs to obtain wealth or even their goals necessarily… I just think that they need to be able to stay afloat. I know what you might be thinking “What if that young persons goal is to just stay afloat in the real world?”
Well who knows, you might be right, that may be that persons only goal that the time being… but I think that would be rare among student who have just left high school or even college. Most students who are finally leaving their parents house for the first time to live on their own, or a college student is finally ready to settle down and get a sturdy job after working hard for a degree, their ambitions are through the roof. They aren’t usually extremely reasonable when it comes to setting goals because all they want to do is obtain wealth and their high standard goals.
Now that I’ve explained to you how I am using the word success, I can give you my list of the attributes that are most important to success in the real world;
Money Skills - Overall monetary skills are extremely important. Being able to manage money so that there is enough income to pay rent/bills, buy groceries, buy gasoline, and make other necessary purchases, all while keeping a good amount of it in savings. This also includes keeping a balanced checkbook and managing a debt or credit card.
House Skills - House skills are important to taking care of an apartment or home. These include being able to keep everything tidy, so vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes, sweeping, etc. It also means making sure the house is in good shape, so no broken furnaces, doors, windows, or other appliances. Being able to keep a house in good shape and clean will help tremendously. I can tell you firsthand that when things are cluttered in my house I do not function nearly as well, so this will have a ripple effect on the rest of the skills.
Time-Management Skills - This is a huge one. When you are able to manage your time well, you can get a lot more done in a lot less time, while avoiding stress. This will give a good feeling about what you have accomplished, and will keep you motivated to do it again, while bad time management will make you stressed and keep you from getting into the habit of managing time well. It will end up becoming a vicious cycle that you cannot escape.
Cooking Skills - This kinda goes with housing skills, but being able to cook good and healthy meals will have a big effect on the rest of your life.
Transportation Skills - Being able to get from place to place is extremely important. If you have a car, making sure the gas tank is filled, knowing how to repair a flat tire, or change the oil, etc, are all very important skills to know. If you don’t have a car, knowing the bus, tram, or train schedule is a good idea.
People Skills - Being able to interact with people of all ages is quite important. Making connections with strangers can come in handy later when you need a favor. Even just having the ability to socialize well with others can end up helping you make friends, which can help to deal with the loneliness of living alone. Another time this may be an important skill is during a job interview. If you have good people skills, take social cues, and are polite, you can make quite the impression, which can land you the job you’ve been needing or wanting.
These are essentially all the skills need to stay afloat in the real world. So how are these to be taught? Most people think that schools should do this, but can a teacher really teach a classroom of thirty kids how to have people skills or how to manage their time well? I think that schools can, and definitely should incorporate the learning of some of these skills to kids, such as adding something into math classes about writing checks, managing a savings and checking account, balancing a checkbook, paying rent, and other financial things. I also think that making a class where you learn how to take good care of a car would be a good idea (maybe that could be added into Drivers Ed classes). And I know that there already are classes such as Home Ed where you learn to cook and do other things. But what about the more characteristic things like people skills or time management skills? Can those be taught by schools? I don’t believe so. I think that those are entirely up to the parents. I look at all the kids who are doing extremely well in school, and all of them have good time-management skills, which I believe sprouted from habits the parents put them in as young children. And kids with really good people skills have parents who are very social and pushed the kids at a young age to go out of their comfort zone and socialize with adults as well as their peers. Kids who are very well-mannered and polite have parents who forced them to act politely at the dinner table and be considerate of other people. So how can we make these skills more common-place among young adults? We certainly cannot force the parents, who are “slacking” so-to-speak, to make their kids well behaved and good time managers. Well the more and more I read, the more I thought about what the solution would be. I also began thinking about this new found sub-problem on a larger scale. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that no matter how important the skills above may be, the most important skills of all time are more of characteristics rather than taught skills. I began thinking of skills that teenagers need in the real world that may not be taught skills exactly. For example, a teenager who is moving out of their parents house won't only need skills such as managing rent payments and knowing how to maintain a budget for grocery shopping, but they will need more characteristic skills such as adaptability, etc. So I proceeded to make a list of general characteristics that cannot necessarily be taught, along with their definition and my explanation.
- Resourcefulness; The ability to deal skillfully and promptly with new situations or difficulties. - I put this as number one because no matter where you are going or what you want to do, if you have resourcefulness, you can manage to achieve any of your goals. In the current workforce environment it is becoming more typical for people to go in between jobs and/or professions, as where 50 years ago you got your job based off what your family has always done and you keep your job for 50+ years. Resourcefulness already is a very important skill, and the vitality of it is just growing as the workforce environment is changing so drastically. It is projected that by 2030 most major colleges will no longer be around, but there will be institutes/universities where you can change your profession within six months. The ability to cope with all this change is just becoming a bigger need.
- Wisdom; the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight. This is number two on my list because wisdom is something that life requires. Schools teach knowledge, but knowledge is limited to certain walks of life such as getting a physics major or becoming an engineer, while wisdom is required whether you decide to become an artist, a stay at home parent, or a theoretical astrophysicist.
- Adaptability; able to adjust oneself readily to different conditions. I picked this one because, again, no matter what you want to do with your life, if you are able to adapt to the surrounding environment, you will thrive.
- Steadfastness; Fixed in a direction; Firm in purpose, resolution, faith, etc.; Firmly fixed in a place or position. I chose this in contrast to Adaptability because in addition to being able to adapt, being strong in what you believe is always a good idea. If you can hold onto your faith in God and your morals/values, God will bless you. “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:58
This list was short but I believe that these four characteristics are very important to stay alive and well in the real world. But what about the problem? How are these going to be taught to teenagers? I think that schools can teach the more specific characteristics, and I think that they are currently working to do this, but what about these characteristics? Can schools teach these? I think not. I think it is entirely up to the parents to teach their children these skills, in which case there is not much to do put put our work out there and hope the parents are willing to look for help and teach their children these vital skills.
Source(s);
Guise, Stephen. "How School Trains Us To Fail In The Real World." Deep Existence. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.
Williams, Mary-Jane. "Life Skills All Teens Should Have Before graduating from High School." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 23 Jan. 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.