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Life Skills: Finding Ways To Make Teamwork A Part of Everyday In Our Life

Teaching character and life skills to students

When we work together our team is strong, we accomplish much more, and the team is successful.  Our most important team we are on is our family.  How can we practice teamwork at home?  Working together to clean up, do the dishes, work in the yard.  Almost every activity around the house can include the whole family.  Think about how each member of the family will feel when everyone chips in to help.   It certainly is not up to just one person in the family to be responsible for all the cleaning.

Children can also be included as they get older in planning outings for the family.  This feeling of belonging and being a part of a team will help them withstand peer pressure in school and in life, as well as be willing to include others in their activities.

When teamwork is learned at home, children will be more willing to assist teachers and other students in school.  It may be helping to clean the classroom, or helping other students learn the lesson of the day.  In fact as children develop teamwork they are also developing empathy.  They will be more willing to stand up to anyone who may bully another student or to welcome a new student into the school.  Sometimes new students can have a hard time feeling like they fit in and those who practice teamwork can be of great assistance.

Finally in the community, teamwork is so important to accomplish goals that none of us could do on our own.  It is this type of teamwork that Balanced Life Skills is hoping to find in our Bully Prevention Partners website.  It will only be all of us working together that we can accomplish the our goal of a culture of peace in the classroom for all students.

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Life Skills: Teamwork Teaches Children To Think About The Needs of Others

Teaching character and life skills to students

In our society even our youngest of children end up on teams involving sports or other activity.  Too often the question we ask is, “How did you do?” or we say, “You did really well today!”  If we want to teach our children about teamwork though we may want to change the words we use, and start very early teaching them about teams and how we can accomplish much bigger goals together than we can as just one person.

All of us including children have been on teams.  Our most important team is our family. When we teach our children that the family is the most important team we are on, we will be helping them to see things from others point of view, empathy. When they go to school they will start to see relationships as not just about themselves, but also get to feel what others might be feeling.  When we take them into the community and there are cleanup projects or feeding the less fortunate, they will begin to understand how together we can make a difference far beyond what we can do as individuals.

What would happen if at home we all made a mess?  Do we expect that one person would be responsible for picking up and cleaning the mess?  If we as a family work together to get things cleaned up, we are teaching our children that teamwork is an important characteristic to our family.  Yes sometimes it takes more time than doing it ourselves, but the lesson of teamwork, empathy, fairness and learning how to share responsibility is a valuable lesson for later in life.

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Life Skills: Teamwork Discussions Will Focus on Family and Schools

Teaching character and life skills to students

Our children, just like ourselves, find that we are on a variety of teams.  It may be a school, sports, service project, or for adults we may be on multiple teams at work.  Whenever we find that we are with a group of people trying to achieve a common goal, it requires that we have teamwork.

While all of these outside activities are important to demonstrate the qualities of good teamwork, our inner circle of our family is the most important.  In fact it is here in the family that we first lay the groundwork for teamwork, and this is where we should have our foundation and strongest ties.

Teaching the quality of teamwork to our children with our example and words have a far reaching affect on their relationships later when they get in school and have to deal with social issues and behaviors of classmates, teachers and teams that they may be taking part in.  During this month we will look at what it means to be a teammate, why some teams are successful and others not, how we can contribute to teams we are on and how and why we should speak up as an individual on a team.

Finally I will be tying all of this in to how teaching teamwork to our children has an affect on bullying in school.  Follow us here or come in to the school and enjoy taking classes with our team of dedicated instructors.

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Life Skills: Teamwork – Definition

Teaching character and life skills to students

 

Each month we define and discuss a word of character development and life skill with all of our students.

This month the word is Teamwork and will be defined this way.

Young students: Teamwork means: “Let’s work together to get it done!”

Older students: Teamwork means: Working together as a group to achieve a common goal.

Here are the worksheets for our students:

Teamwork worksheet TT

Teamwork Worksheet 5/6

Teamwork worksheet 7-12

Teen / Adult Teamwork worksheet

If you would like to see how we will deal with this subject with our students please follow our discussions here during the month of July or come in and TRY A CLASS.

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Life Skills: The Practice of Perseverance Builds Confidence In Ourselves

Teaching character and life skills to students

Martial arts schools so many times have students brought to them to build their confidence.  What is it about the training that takes place there that accomplishes that goal, and what can you do as a parent at home that would emulate that training.

Confidence is built on feeling good about yourself and what you have achieved.  In the martial arts you have goals set before you, some of them physical and some of them mental.  You are given the time frame to accomplish them in, and if you stay on target and practice you will most likely reach those goals.  When goals are reached, the confidence is built, so that when the next even harder task is asked of us, we know that if we commit ourselves to the task or skill, we will be able to accomplish it and yes – build even more confidence.

Imagine though, we quit or gave up saying it was too hard, or worse asked the instructor to excuse us from having to do something because…  what would our confidence be like when the next task was asked of us.  We may be willing to give up again, and possibly with even less effort.

Here is the bottom line:  When we achieve something after working hard, we feel good about ourselves and know we can do anything if we commit.  When we feel confident, we’ll set more goals, and have an easier time committing and persevering.  What have you done recently that shows perseverance?  Did you get past your fears, or not let others influence you to stop reaching for your goals?  Did you tell yourself, “When the going gets tough, I don’t quit!”

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Life Skills: When Perseverance Does Not Appear To Be In Your Child’s DNA

Teaching character and life skills to students

As I started this piece I was thinking of all those times my father and mother both told me I was not living up to my potential.  I thought about how many times even teachers told me that I was wasting good talent.  But I do not remember any of them coming up with a solution – other than just saying to me – You Have To Apply Yourself!  Do you know how empty those words are to a middle school or high school student?  What do you mean “apply yourself”?  Then I would go off about how it was bad teachers or any other excuse that made perfect sense to me.

Now that I am in the other position and past having my own kids that are frustrating me with their lack of effort – I have looked at this subject with much more objectivity and deeper than ever before.  Yes there are things that you can do.  No there is not a single conversation you can have and then everything is fixed. But here are a few steps that should help over the long haul, and yes it can be a long haul.

  1. Look for ways your child is already using perseverance.  It may be saving money for a certain ‘thing’ they want.   Discuss with them the steps they had to take to accomplish that goal and then offer the idea that the same techniques can be used to accomplish other goals.
  2. Do not start with getting straight A’s.  Start small and maybe something that is fun for them.  It may be a finishing a book, building a project or learning a new skill.
  3. Allow the child to choose the goal.  “I want to learn how to ….”  Now you have something that they are excited about and you can help them with planning how to reach the goal.
  4. Be aware and alert to things your child says that will give you the opportunity to teach.  They may say, “I would like to read the most books this summer, or win the science fair, or get a ipod”  Now you have a place to start with setting out steps, an action plan, and a timetable to reach that goal.
  5. Include your children in your own goal setting process.  It may be for accomplishing something around the house, or learning a new skill yourself.  Include them in on how you break down the tasks and make it happen over a period of time.
  6. Be real with them.  If there goal is to learn to play a musical instrument the amount of commitment is different than if there goal is to win the science fair.  Helping them to grasp reality vs. making them believe their goal is impossible is the balance you must make.  Helping them to think it through first will help to keep them from being discouraged when things do not happen as fast as they thought they might.
  7. Celebrate, Celebrate, Celebrate!  When you see them put forth the effort, sticking to their plan, and making progress – be sure to commend them and celebrate the effort!  This will go a long way in keeping them on track and encouraging them to complete other goals in the same manner.
Finally, making goal setting a part of their life is key to working on these steps.  Before the school year starts, begin talking about the goals they have for the year and how they plan on reaching them.  They may be academic goals or social goals, or they may be goals for showing leadership in areas of interest to them.  If your child has been the target of bullies in the past, they may have a goal of standing up to them and being proactive for changing the culture of their school.  You can help them with role-playing and getting them to think of ways they can accomplish their goals. 

I am here to help your child also to take leadership roles, to encourage them and provide help to them.  What if your child was a part of or started a project to help the hungry, stop bullying, provide school supplies or something else that they were interested in.  Balanced Life Skills wants to help them to accomplish their goals too.