Early childhood educators are sometimes confused about what they should be teaching: life-skills (self-control, communicating, etc.) or content (mathematics, reading, science, etc.) Some say, “Don’t children just learn necessary life-skills naturally as they go along?

It is the teacher’s role to teach content.” In fact, content and life-skills are both important and interrelated, and it is always helpful to be reminded that learning life-skills enables children to use content. Otherwise, content can be just an academic chore, which may lead to bored children. Skilled teaching enables children to develop the life skills they need to succeed and to absorb the content that is so necessary.

Ellen Galinsky’s chapter in Children of 2020 explains that it is first essential to know the children and to see exactly where they are in terms of development. Next, the thoughtful teacher plans to take them one step further in their development — to begin to develop the life-skills that enable children to manage their attention, emotions, and behavior in order to reach goals. These skills weave together our social, emotional, and intellectual capacities. To summarize, they are:

• Focus and self-control involve many necessary life-skills such as paying attention, remembering the rules, and controlling one’s natural response in order to achieve a larger goal. Anyone who is constantly distracted by toys, other children, and the environment will never be able to finish a project. Employers report that being able to focus is crucial for a worker’s success in any field.
• Perspective-taking requires controlling one’s own thoughts and feelings in order to see from the point of view of another. The child develops the flexibility to see a situation in different ways, and to consider someone else’s thinking alongside his or her own. Being able to do this affects how we deal with conflict, because children who can understand the motives of others are less likely to misunderstand their behavior. As a result, they get into fewer conflicts.
• Communicating well means reflecting on the goal of what we want to communicate and understanding the viewpoints of others. Workplace research shows that written and spoken communication skills need the most improvement among workers’ skills.
• Making connections begins with sorting and categorizing — for example, young children can easily see that spoons and forks go together because both are used to eat. It also begins with the understanding that one thing can represent another — that a photograph of the family dog represents the real dog. This skill is useful in all the subjects studied later in school.
• Critical thinking is the ongoing search for real information to guide beliefs, decisions, and actions, rather than simply making decisions based on instinct, feelings, or whimsy. Teachers who ask children meaningful, open ended questions are cultivating the use of critical thinking.
• Taking on challenges is a fact of life, and challenges, even positive ones, can be stressful. Rather than avoiding stress, it’s best to encourage children to actively take on challenges. Children who are willing to take on challenges have a “growth mindset,” seeing their abilities as something they can change and develop — this viewpoint is the healthy, dynamic one.
• Self-directed engaged learning is the skill of children who are just starting out in the world of education — children who are unstoppable learners, children who haven’t been disappointed by their experiences in education. By creating a dynamic community of active young learners we can nurture this precious attribute and keep it going.

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