Developing Capable Young People—The Skills Needed—The Work of Stephen Glenn

Taking a look at the second part of Glenn’s work, he identifies four skills that youth need to acquire to be successful in life. He identifies these as intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, system skills, and judgment skills. The importance of developing intrapersonal skill—liking and respecting yourself and having the ability to strengthen positive self-control and self-discipline and continuing to assess that you are making growth, is essential. In the 21st Century, the ability to work in a team of people and communicate effectively is captured in the content on interpersonal skills. Judgment skills, we would all agree, are critical in youth and adults. Good judgment leads to good decisions, and good decisions lead to positive outcomes. The most interesting set of skills to me are the system skills—the ability to navigate in the world both personally and professionally.

The Developing Capable Young People website lists these skills in this way:
INTRAPERSONAL SKILLS
The tools to respond to feelings effectively—self-assessment, self-control and self-discipline.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
The tools to communicate, cooperate, negotiate, share, empathize, resolve conflicts, and listen effectively when dealing with people.

SYSTEMIC SKILLS
The tools of responsibility, adaptability, and flexibility necessary to deal with the environmental family, social, legal, and other systems in which we live.

JUDGMENT SKILLS
The tools to set goals and/or make decisions, judgments, and choices
So again, check it out. Personally, I found participating in this workshop over ten years ago, life-changing.

Not so usual celebrations…
August 19th is Aviation Day. Up, Up, and Away! If you’ve been following the “Not So Usual Celebrations”, you may have discovered that it is difficult to tell a “sanctioned” holiday from an “unsanctioned” holiday. Official holiday have been created by an Act of Congress, so you may wonder—which are real and which are not. Well, Aviation Day is for real. President Franklin Roosevelt declared August 19th as Aviation Day through a Presidential Proclamation issued in 1939 to honor the birthday of Orville Wright, who was born in 1871, along with his brother Frank, is considered the father of aviation in this country. Whether you fly often or not, the world certainly appears to be a smaller place as the access to other places becomes easier with flight.

Activities for Youth
Have kids create paper air planes and participate in a “Fly Off”. Have students fly a plane, measure the number of feet the plane flew, record it and then proclaim a winner. You can find directions for making paper airplanes on the web at http://www.10paperairplanes.com/. Simple, illustrated directions to make the project easy.