In fact, he was a STEAM punk! He was an excellent problem-solver and a great listener. I saw this with Ricardo, who emerged as a leader in small group STEAM projects. Project-based learning provides an excellent context for having students develop these soft skills. You can call these critical skills, timeless skills, and vital skills but they aren’t soft by any means. If anything, these critical skills are could be called “hard skills,” because of the inherent challenge in mastering them. Later, when they studied their teams in Project Aristotle, they found the top skills were, “equality, generosity, curiosity toward the ideas of your teammates, empathy, and emotional intelligence.” Some would call these “soft skills,” but as classroom teachers, we know that there’s nothing soft at all about these skills. Instead, the top of their list was, “being a good coach communicating and listening well possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view) having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues.” In other words, the most critical factors for success involved soft skills. When Google began Project Oxygen, they assumed the best predictor of employee success would be university program and grades. Project-based learning provides an authentic opportunity for students to develop critical soft skills. This moment was a reminder for me of the valuable soft skills that students develop in project-based learning. When it was finished, I asked him if he would be willing to answer questions and he came alive during this question and answer process. Ricardo’s video was well-produced, with creativity and humor infused through the entire thing. This prerecorded process blended together a high-stakes element of launching to an audience with the low-stakes opportunity to make mistakes and revise their work. All they would have to do would be to press “play” and let the projector do its job. I offered students the chance to record and edit videos instead of doing a synchronous presentation. At the end of the project, students had to share their geeky interests with the class over the course of a week. Each student completed a Geek Out Blog and Ricardo chose engineering and robotics as his topic. Instead, he had a breakthrough during an independent project. However, it wasn’t working during direct instruction and guided practice. I wanted him to develop the critical skill of communication. I wanted Ricardo to find his voice and build confidence. It was rocky but I managed to complete the four minute speech. However, two sentences into it, my voice cracked and I simply couldn’t get the words out. My teacher let me try a second time and I scripted out the entire speech. When I took public speaking as an elective my freshman year, I froze up entirely and had to quit ten seconds into my first speech. However, when I pointed to him, he would stutter and stammer or merely shrug his shoulders and say, “I don’t know.” On several occasions, I would see that he had the right answer and I would even give him the heads-up that I would be calling on him. If I called on him, he would freeze up entirely. By “shy,” I don’t mean he didn’t enjoy talking in front of the class or he rarely raised his hand. If you enjoy this blog but you’d like to listen to it on the go, just click on the audio below or subscribe via Apple Podcasts (ideal for iOS users) or Google Play and Stitcher (ideal for Android users). In fact, before you dive into this piece, you might want to check out Mike Kaechele’s articles on the Marriage of SEL and PBL as well as how to combine SEL and PBL in your classroom. It’s an idea that Matinga Ragatz and Mike Kaechele explore in their upcoming book The Pulse of PBL and their thinking on this subject has definitely shaped my thinking on this powerful overlap as well. In my latest article, I explore the relationship between project-based learning (PBL) and social-emotional learning (SEL). SEL is a critical part of student soft skill development. Social-emotional learning has become a bit trendy lately.
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