I try with my 7th and 9th graders to do group work, or work in pairs and more than half prefer to work alone. Now I'm going to really emphasize this more and encourage them to exercise their non-cognitive skills.
The New York Times published a recent article, "Why What You Learned at Pre-school is Crucial At Work". Basically all the job whose salaries have been increasing over the years are dependent on workers having not just the right academic success or technological know-how, but high EQ's. All the jobs that were primarily technological that didnt need any EQ skills have had lowered salaraies or have been replaced by robots and computers.
I do not want my child to be a robot or my students. If I could have them be more social and interact meaningfully in my Social Studies classroom I would so prefer that over the traditional I will lecture you approach. So this will be a goal, to engage in this process to walk them thru having more of a seminar type atmosphere where they can teach each other. If my classes can look more like this by the end of the semester or year, I will feel like I really accomplished something purposeful and relevant for their futures.
The article goes on to say, "James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, did groundbreaking work concluding that noncognitive skills like character, dependability and perseverance are as important as cognitive achievement. They can be taught, he said, yet American schools don’t necessarily do so.
These conclusions have been put into practice outside academia. Google researchers, for example, studied the company’s employees to determine what made the best manager. They assumed it would be technical expertise. Instead, it was people who made time for one-on-one meetings, helped employees work through problems and took an interest in their lives."
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