Lauren: We've talked about budgeting and time management as
our first two important life skills. So where does that bring
us for number three? Healthy communication skills. I almost
called it conflict resolution skills, because I felt like that
was really important, but I went with a more all encompassing
term. If you missed our first two episodes in this series of
life skills every high school student needs to master, or at
least be familiar with before they leave high school, head
back to the last two episodes of High School Counseling
Conversations to listen. I've linked them in the show notes,
but you can just as easily head back to the show and binge them
in order.
You got into this profession to make a difference in your
students' lives, but you're spread thin by all of the things
that keep getting added to your to do list. I can't create more
hours in the day, but I can invite you into my counselor
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as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that'll
help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your
students. I'm Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype
girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program
and remind you of how much you love your job.
Healthy communication skills find themselves presenting as
important in our homes, in our schools, in our workplaces, in
our relationships, and literally in everyday interactions with
strangers and people we have to or get to encounter each day.
When we get into communication skills, these definitely fall
into the social skills of the behaviors in our ASCA mindsets
and behaviors list. Man, when I read that column, it was just
hard to pick one or two.
If I were you and I was setting out to teach or nurture
communication skills with my students, I just scroll down
that list myself and pick the best two or three that
correspond to whatever I was specifically teaching or kind of
what outcomes I wanted to see. A lot of key characteristics in
these social skills involve interacting with people who are
different from you, possibly figuring out how to do that
while you're on a team, interacting in ways that are
effective and meaningful, those are kind of like some of the
themes. I'm confident that the ways that we choose to
communicate with others will either set us on a trajectory
that allows us to further positive relationships or cut us
off socially from relationships that could be really life giving
and fruitful, like we have a decision to make and a path to
choose to go down.
I think it's important to keep in mind that we counselors
probably have a very healthy perspective of how to
communicate, what healthy communication looks like, how
you'd respond when you found yourself in a really toxic
place. At least, you'd probably be able to recognize these
things. And we have students who very rarely have seen positive
examples of this. Their norm may be something that we would tell
them to run really far from, but they don't have the skills to
kind of sort through that.
Sometimes the best and healthiest relationships they're
experiencing are at school. I just think like what a privilege
it is to be able to speak into those and show them love and
care and support in this way, by the way that we use our words to
communicate with each other and care for each other.
Healthy communication is important to practice, even when
it's hard or challenging or the other person doesn't always seem
to deserve it. You know what I'm talking about, even people who
you love sometimes don't feel like they deserve healthy
communication from you because you're getting a little
frustrated. What do you do when you're really frustrated on the
phone with someone on customer service with a company, and
you're not getting what you think you fairly deserve? What
if the store doesn't seem like they're honoring their return
policy, but you didn't even wear the shirt that you're trying to
return? I can think of a lot of justice situations that would
fire me up and frustrate me, but you catch more flies with honey.
So let's talk about how to communicate in a way that gets
your point across and is healthy, so that you can at
least set the example for other people, whether you feel
justified in the way you're talking or not.
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My favorite way to practice communication skills with
students is 100% role play and scenarios. It would be really
hard to master strong communication skills without
ever practicing any communicating to get there. With
role playing scenarios, you could have them read full on
scripts. You could have them pull scenarios from cards, like
out of a basket or a hat. You could have a conversation
starter and then somebody has to answer the question and then ask
another question to somebody else in the group, or they ask
another conversation starter to the next person. You could have
challenging scenarios that really push them to have to
troubleshoot, either individually or with a group
think.
Some of my favorite and most fun memories are seeing kids really
have that light bulb moment from a really challenging social
scenario card from some sort of classroom lesson I was doing
where they had to communicate their feelings, or pretend like
they're talking to adults, sort out friendship issues or bring
up something difficult with a boss. Even if they've never been
in that scenario before, it really makes them think and kind
of evaluate what their own values are, and practice saying
something potentially hard. It always gets rowdy, and a lot of
times they get stumped, but like in the best ways as they're
trying to come up with their answers for these scenarios or
questions.
You can probably think back to when you started as a high
school counselor and you hated calling angry parents back. Or
maybe that's still you. I don't know who loves doing that, but
it just doesn't go away just because you avoid it. You know
you have to step into that, even though it's messy, and
inevitably, no matter how much you practice, it is still
complicated, and so is every relationship and conversation,
because we're dealing with humans. You may never be
perfect. I'm gonna be willing to guess you're never going to be
perfect, but the more you practice, the more confidence
you can have as you build in yourself, some confidence and
some more self awareness that you bring to the table.
I'm saying this to us as counselors, but also like you
can communicate this to students. The same way that we
are building our confidence and self awareness, we want our
students to have those same skill sets. We want them to
build that self efficacy muscle like it has to be practiced and
strengthened and master that self advocacy skill that'll push
them farther into successful relationships at home, work,
school and into the real world.
I'm going to link a few resources that I mentioned were
my favorites, so that you can poke around and see what might
be helpful for you and your students. Don't be afraid to use
chat GPT and get really specific for some scripts that can help
you facilitate some really good conversations in terms of
scenarios with your students around some of these topics. Go
specific in each of these categories, and I think you'll
get something good that comes out of it.
Let's help our high school students not live with regrets
of not practicing or mastering these three life skills sooner.
Thanks for listening to this three part series all about some
important life skills your students can be working on now
while they're still in high school. Those were budgeting,
time management and healthy communication.
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Thanks for listening to today's episode of High School
Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today
can be found in the show notes and also at
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