What are your schools doing to teach students life skills?

<p>My son and I had this discussion about what schools are doing to help teach students life skills necessary for college? He is homeschooled so I truly don't know what schools do to teach these things, or even IF they teach them. Certainly, they are indirectly taught, but are schools doing anything in particular to teach them the life skills they need to succeed in college?</p>

<p>My son HS’16 had a class in 6th grade that taught him how to balance a check book, how to read a recipe and how to double it or halve it, depending on how many people were going to eat it. The students also had to do laundry at home as homework. A parent had to sign off that the student had done 2-3 loads every week for 4 weeks. That included pretreating stains, picking right water temp and load size, running the washer, using the dryer, folding and putting away. It was a 6-8 week class. I am sure there were other things, I just can’t remember. I do know he is still doing his own laundry now, 4 years later.</p>

<p>I’m not quite sure what you are referring to. My kids’ HS did have some instruction on note-taking and research methods, to be used in college. There were some classes in middle school in foods (home ec), infant care, and basic personal finance.</p>

<p>In the HS there really wasn’t more time for more personal finance curriculum, which is the only life skill I can think of that I would want the school to teach.</p>

<p>As far as cooking, cleaning, writing thank you notes, doing laundry, etc - those were things we taught at home.</p>

<p>New Jersey requires HS students to take a six month personal finance class. My daughter also had a basic computer class in HS (excel, powerpoint, and word).</p>

<p>My high school has a required career search class and a required financial literacy class, but they don’t teach us how to balance a checkbook or anything.</p>

<p>My kids had both home ec and shop in middle school. Home ec included meal planning and nutrition, sorting laundry, balancing check books along with cooking and sewing. Shop was mostly basic carpentry. Health class in high school also included a lot more than just sex ed. Frankly, I consider a lot of life skills my job not the school system’s.</p>

<p>My daughter had a yr long class that taught her to repair & refurbish desktop computers.
Then she traveled with her class to a developing country where they installed about 32 of the computers and taught the community to use & repair them.</p>

<p>But what kind of things do you mean?
Study & research skills were polished up in high school, so I guess those are life skills as they relate to college.
So if your son has those down and he’s had some experience working & presenting in groups, then he should have at least the basics needed.</p>

<p>Home & garden type things, she learned at home or through her volunteer work.</p>

<p>Hopefully, nothing.</p>

<p>I won’t trust HS with this mission :)</p>

<p>These are all interesting responses. Let me explain a bit further and maybe this will clarify my original post. My son serves on a state advisory committee for youth. They are tasked with coming up with some ideas of possible legislation regarding “life skills” and “college readiness.” It is quite vague, but I believe that is intentional. Last year, the group had an intense discussion regarding financial literacy becoming a requirement to graduate. This was quite the debate as many of the top students already have been taught this at home - often by their family. By requiring financial literacy to graduate means one less “academic” or AP class the student was planning on taking; thus, “weakening” their transcript for top tier schools. So… what are some good ideas you have seen or heard of that help you student to become successful in college and in life? I loved the idea of going to a developing country to do a project such as the one mentioned. I’m not sure how a public school would or could do something of that magnitude. Just curious, I am guessing this was a private school? Regardless, it’s a great idea! Does anyone have any other ideas? Thanks!!!</p>

<p>No other ideas, really. I just wanted to add to the financial literacy class idea. I once worked as a tutor in a high school that required a semester long financial literacy class for 10th graders. They were allowed to take a test near the end of 9th grade to prove they already had the knowledge the class required. If they passed the test, then they didn’t have to take the class. This was the only class the high school allowed anyone to test out of. This is a high school that also required driver’s ed in order to graduate, even the blind girl had to take the academic portion of driver’s ed. They figured that everyone knows someone that drives and it doesn’t hurt anyone to have some basic knowledge of rules of the road, car insurance, etc.</p>

<p>Our high school allows students to turn in late work. It allows extra credit. It doesn’t ever apply an attendance penalty . . . I’d say it’s doing a great job reinforcing the skills that nudge college students toward failure.</p>

<p>My daughters school required vocational classes to graduate, but not foreign language.
:confused:
(It is actually an inner city public school, although private schools also offer such experiences.
They did fundraising and wrote grants and i believe the chaperones paid their own way, which is uncommon in my experience, but it makes it much cheaper.
Often the most expensive part of the trip is airfare, the rest is nominal.)</p>

<p>She got around the restrictive requirements by participating on school sports teams which gave her a waiver for PE.
She didn’t have a chance to take " fun" classes, everything was with an eye toward college.</p>

<p>BTW, our district doesn’t even offer drivers ed anymore.
:(</p>

<p>I don’t think the states should be enacting any new legislation regarding ‘life skills’ and ‘college readiness’. Students should be learning the basics - math, literature, history, science, foreign language, plus whatever electives they want. Classes should be challenging enough that they actually learn something. I WISH my kids who participated in sports could have gotten a waiver for PE. Our HS floated an online financial literacy class idea, but I don’t think it took hold.</p>

<p>My d had to take basic computer skills learning word, excel and power point. She’s taking a personal finance class right now - she gets a “salary” and has to pay rent for her desk, she’s had to find an apartment, work out a schedule for work and school, even keep her receipts for a month to see how she spends her money. She also just did a project to see what made more financial sense - leasing or owning a car. Probably the 2 most useful classes she’s had in hs.</p>

<p>Our school now requires a yearlong personal finance class of all students. Since all students must pass the class, much of the material is taught at such a basic level that it won’t be of much practical use to the students, and yes it does cut into time that could be used for more useful things. There is some useful material but much of what is being taught is stuff that really isn’t that hard to figure out when the time comes, and won’t be remembered by that time anyhow (will teens really remember much about the different types of life insurance when they’re ready to buy?). Way too much time spent for a small amount of useful information learned. I’m sure it could be helpful for some kids but if your kids are good enough at math to understand interest, and generally aware of what goes on in the world, and financially conservative, not a good use of time.
But if your kid needed someone to tell them not to count on living well on social security when they retire, then I guess it’s the most important class they take in high school.</p>

<p>Classroom driver’s ed is also required. Not sure if blind students are required to complete that. My kids would probably say that nothing useful is learned in health.</p>

<p>Typing was offered as an elective in middle school and was by far the most helpful of any of these practical life classes. There was also a “life skills” elective offered in middle school which includes such things as basic cooking and doing laundry, but it seems to me unless a school is serving a significant population of kids with serious home life issues (ie homeless, or single parent drug addict), I can’t see why the kids need to learn this stuff in school, why wouldn’t families teach their kids these basic skills?</p>

<p>My D (currently a college freshman) would have loved a personal finance requirement in high school. They do have a health class for freshmen which requires that they figure out how to live on a particular salary so maybe that’s the school’s idea of personal finance. My D took economics but it wasn’t a requirement (it is this year but it does limit a student’s choice in other social studies classes that they may be interested in). I think econ got her interested in personal finance. After talking to her friends, she realized a lot of them had no clue about personal finance. Some of them didn’t have bank accounts and she helped get them the information they needed to open their own accounts.</p>

<p>I do think it’s the parents’ job to teach kids how to live on their own though. How to support themselves, have a good work ethic, clean up after themselves, respect property they might be renting, eating healthy, when to seek medical care (and how to do that), personal safety, etc.</p>

<p>@mamabear, interestingly, I think my son is leaning to your point of view. While my son is homeschooled, he has definite opinions regarding education and legislation. Like you and MSNDIS, he feels that it is not the school’s responsibility to teach things that the parents should be teaching. I told him that teaching solid academic and challenging curriculum can be seen as “life skills” depending on how someone defines “life skills.” He has a strong suspicion, however, that his view will not be well received at their next meeting. I guess time will tell. Regardless, I still personally, am very intrigued by emeraldkity’s description of refurbishing computers and doing something productive with the skill. Fundraising, grant writing, travel arrangement, budgeting to do all this,… To me this is fun, exciting, and real life skills. Hmmm… maybe since my son is homeschooled we can implement this into our “school…” Thanks everyone for all the great ideas. He suspects the group is going to stay on the path of financial literacy, but perhaps he can recommend Bajamm’s idea of being able to test out of it. He just hates the idea of more tests! :)</p>

<p>DS had a required economics class that had a personal finance component. In addition to learning about checking accounts, he learned the basics of budgeting, investing, taxes. The school does a program for freshman that involves making life choices, budgeting, marriage and family, etc. I think because we are in a blue collar town we take it a bit more seriously, as only 30% of our kids graduate from a four-year college in 6 years.</p>

<p>Our HS also taught basic computer skills and touch typing. The kids were required to write research papers using library books as sources and not the internet.</p>

<p>My D’s school has a Consumer Ed graduation requirement (actually, I think it’s a state of Illinois requirement). There is a Consumer Education course offered, but the requirement can also be satisfied by taking Law, Honors Law, Economics or AP Economics. You also used to be able to test out of it, but I’m not sure if that’s the case anymore.</p>