Each year, schools are expected to impart an increasingly larger scope of content and skills to students. So much so that it often referred to as the “crowded” curriculum, where teaching is a “mile wide, and an inch deep”.

 And while there is certainly great value in giving kids a broad-based understanding of the world, there are some essential skills that are vital to a successful life beyond school. These skills are given numerous names: twenty-first century skills, soft skills, deep skills, essential skills, or even secret skills. Whatever you choose to call them, these skills are centered around the ability to be aware of and manage ourselves and others.

Despite the often lamented “crowded” curriculum, these essential skills are usually expected to be acquired by osmosis, or more colloquially, ‘caught, not taught’.

The thinking is that if students are learning things like French, English, History and Math in a room full of peers, that somehow, they will also learn to communicate, negotiate, and empathise with each other, take on conflict resolution skills, develop creativity, and critically reflect on their professional and personal choices.

If you’ve spent any time around groups of young people (or adults, for that matter), you would know that this is wishful thinking. Like any other learning, these vital skills need to be explicitly taught and then given dedicated time to practice.

This is one of the main reasons for our 100 Year 7 Glasshouse students all ‘doing school’ in one room the L8 Open Space. Self and peer management are taught and, through rolled teams, explicitly practised through cooperative learning structures, at a key developmental time in their lives. Year 7 students have to learn, understand, communicate, resolve conflict with and ultimately create value with others that they would not necessarily choose to on their own, and in the process begin to understand themselves.  Just like in the real world of work!

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s all roses. It is actually in the hard knocks and peer conflict that the most important lessons are learned and embraced. Lessons that will serve students when parents and teachers are no longer there to guide them. The hope is that by the time they move out of the tumultuous Middle Years, students at Glasshouse Christian College will be better equipped with the skills needed to chart a course for the rest of their lives.

Is creating something special with others you didn’t choose a smooth and easy journey? Not by a long shot. But, as they say, rough roads make tough feet.

Larry McKeown, Year 7 Coordinator