Life Skills Training

Life Skills Training: Youth/Students in high school also focus on college and career readiness, and learn strategies that enable them to:

• Plan for higher education

• Complete applications for scholarships, grants, and loans

• Prepare employment applications and resumes

• Perform well in job interviews

• Develop financial responsibility

Based on the belief that good citizenship must not only be learned but also applied, both levels of the Overcoming Obstacles in Life Skills Training curriculum include a Service Learning module, which provides a step-by-step guide to developing student projects that foster active participation within their communities. Service Learning includes descriptions of each phase of a project, as well as lessons to guide students through each step of the process.

Implementation

• Overcoming Obstacles in Life Skills Training can be implemented in a variety of courses and modified to fit individual school schedules. The curriculum materials can be used as a one- or two-semester course, in advisory programs or after-school settings, or integrated into core content areas. The curriculum is organized into separate modules. Each module contains a sequence of lessons designed to develop specific concepts and skills, which are reinforced throughout the curriculum. The modules are organized for planning purposes into four parts. The introductory modules in Part I of the curriculum provide a foundation for the introduction of the core skills of communication, decision making, and goal setting, which are presented in Part II. These core skills in turn provide the basic tools that students will use in Part III and during the service learning project in Part IV.

• The curriculum’s modular structure is deliberately flexible and allows you to tailor the lessons to meet your students’ needs. We will begin with Part I, followed by Part II, and then choose an order for the modules in Part III that is most appropriate for Youth/Students. Part IV addresses the variety of ways that can incorporate a service learning project into instruction. Each Overcoming Obstacles in Life Skills Training lesson is designed for use in a 50-minute class session but can be condensed or expanded to meet your specific needs.

• The modules concerning specific skills (e.g., Communication Skills, On-the-Job Skills) can be used for one-semester courses that meet three times a week. Lessons from Service Learning can then be selected to fill out the remaining periods in the semester schedule

• Youth/Students can also integrate the curriculum into your core content classes by asking students to apply life skills to what they are learning. For example, you might have students apply problem solving skills to word problems in their math classes. You can also have students use conflict resolution skills to find alternative solutions to wars they learn about in their history classes. Additionally, you might have students investigate different forms of nonverbal communication across various cultures in their foreign language classes.

• Individual activities and extensions can also be incorporated into daily lesson plans.

• For example, you might use the “What Stereotypes Do” activity from “Lesson 5:

• Avoiding Stereotypes” of Confidence Building in a lesson about the civil rights era in the United States.

• Youth/Students are encouraged to complete the lesson plans presented in this curriculum. “My Overcoming Obstacles” is an app for iOS and Android that can be used to facilitate development of your customized scope and sequence. You can download the app for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.