1. Change The Prompt!
How to Easily Integrate Employability Skills into the Classroom and Make the Writing Process More Meaningful to Students

2. Who am I ?
Dan DeVers
17 Years Experience as an ABE Teacher and Program Coordinator for Marion Community Schools
5 Years Experience as Indiana State Adult Education Coordinator, Department of Workforce Development

3. Who are you ?
Teacher
Tutor
Director

4. Why Do Students Typically Come To Class?

5. Typical Essay Prompts Gun Control - Pro vs Con Meat vs Vegan
What is your favorite hobby?
Current State:
Animal Testing - Pro vs Con
Describe your favorite vacation?
What is a goal you have?

6. Essay Prompts That Address Employability Skills
Got
Ethics?
Future State:
The teacher can introduce topics which may address a wider scale of interest and draw a focus upon Employability Skills:
Most everyone one has had some type of job whether paid or unpaid. With topics such as these, students can bring in personal experience coupled with information given by the teacher or researched. Discussions may be more relevant, thus meaningful. Here, not only writing is addressed, but also employability skills.
Example Questions/Topics: What make for a good manager/employee? What are characteristics of a bad manager/employee?
Anger Management

7. WIOA and Adult Education
Key Changes in Adult Education/English Language Services
Sharper focus on transitions to postsecondary education, employment and training
Support for career pathways, integrated education and training, and other promising approaches
Greater alignment with partners through comprehensive planning, performance accountability, and the one-stop system
This change in prompt aligns with OCTAE and WIOA’s new focus, which requires teachers to incorporate employability/soft skills into current curriculum. This makes sense because most students come to AE classroom because they need a job. In order to obtain these jobs, they need to increase their academic skills to pass the HSE or enter post secondary school. However, what students and teachers may not know is: Most employers’ greatest concern is employees lack many employability skills (soft skills). Examples are: Communication skills – written and verbal – teamwork, and independent work
Focusing on Employability Skills through essay writing and oral communication is an approach I took in my Adult Education classroom.

8. Common Employability Skills
APPLIED KNOWLEDGE
• Reading
• Writing
• Mathematics
• Critical Thinking
PERSONAL SKILLS
• Integrity
• Initiative
• Dependability & Reliability
• Professionalism
WORKPLACE SKILLS
• Planning & Organizing
• Problem Solving
• Decision Making
• Technology
PEOPLE SKILLS
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Respect
These are many of the employability skills set forth by OCTAE. Currently AE classes focus primarily on Applied Knowledge; however, classrooms need to also incorporate the 3 additional areas into curriculum. These areas may be currently addressed in classrooms; however, students and teachers may not be making connections with how the skills addressed in class align with the workplace. Therefore, how do we create stronger links between applied knowledge and other employability skills?
One easy solution is to incorporate these skills into essay prompts and follow up with Socratic discussion, which will include elements of speech communication.

9. Workplace Skills
PLANNING & ORGANIZING: Planning and prioritizing work to manage time effectively and accomplish assigned tasks
PROBLEM SOLVING: Demonstrating the ability to apply critical thinking skills to solve
DECISION MAKING: Applying critical thinking skills to solve problems encountered in the workplace
BUSINESS FUNDAMENTALS: Having fundamental knowledge of the organization and the industry
Since ABE teachers already have a strong understanding of Applied skills, I chose to look more closely at the three other Employability Skills sections and see how they could be addressed in the essay preparation I was doing with my adult learners. The first of those three areas is Workplace Skills.
CUSTOMER FOCUS: Actively look for ways to identify market demands and meet customer or client needs
WORKING WITH TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY: Selecting, using and maintaining tools and technology to facilitate work activity

10. Addressing Work Place Skills in the Essay Workplace Skills Addressed:
Topic:
Identifying Hopes and Dreams
Learning Objective:
To help students begin to talk about the hopes and dreams they have for their lives as the starting point for career exploration
Workplace Skills Addressed:
Listening; Reading
Interpret and Communicate information
I started the process of writing a workplace skills essay by choosing the topic Identifying Hopes and Dreams.

11. Addressing Work Place Skills in the Essay
Lesson Topic: Identifying Hopes and Dreams – Taken From ICA
Learning Objective: To help students begin to talk about the hopes and dreams they have for their lives as the starting point for career exploration
Materials Needed: Access to music player and song “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman
lyrics can be found online
SCANS Competencies: Basic Skills: Listening; Reading
Information: Interpret and Communicate information
On this slide you find the topic, objective, material needed, and the Scans competencies I used to begin my lesson.
This lesson was adapted from the Integrating Career Awareness (ICA) curriculum.

12. Addressing Work Place Skills in the Essay
The title of the reading is “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman
Guiding questions:
1. What does the singer want? What are her hopes and dreams?
2. What does she think it will take to realize her hopes and dreams?
3. What steps has she taken to reach her dreams?
4. What kind of jobs has she had or is she planning to get?
5. What gets in the way of her hopes and dreams?
• lack of job, no HS degree, alcoholic father, mother who left, low-paying job, homelessness
Activity:
Distribute the lyrics to the song “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman and play the song for students to listen to and follow
along. You can point out that Tracy Chapman is from Boston and that she was once homeless and began playing music
on the streets in Harvard Square.
Use the guiding questions to facilitate a discussion about what is going on in the song and what hopes and dreams are described. Record key
phrases and words on the board.

13. Addressing Work Place Skills in the Essay
Then guide the discussion to the hopes and dreams of the students. Ask the following:
1. Think about your own life. What kind of song would you write about your life?
2. What would be the title of that song?
These final questions move the activity from the reading/listening questions to the students’ personal experiences.
As we review the guiding questions of this Work Place activity, you will see that there is a strong focus on brainstorming and outlining, which are excellent strategies to better prepare students not only for the writing process but also for enhancing Socratic discussion/Speech communication.
Initial Teacher response to this activity: “This doesn’t seem much different than what I have been already doing in class”.
Answer: “Correct! You have only Changed the Prompt!” which allows for a seamless introduction to Employability Skills.

14. Addressing Work Place Skills in the Essay
Wrap-up discussion focuses on the relevance of this song and discussion to career exploration:
1. It is important to know yourself—what you want and need
2. Having hopes and dreams gives us something to work toward
3. Everybody faces obstacles, whether big or small
4. There are ways to address the obstacles by breaking them down into small steps
Now, the teacher will wrap up the activity with theses guiding questions which will prepare the students to begin research for an essay.

15. Begin the Essay Writing Process
Students can research a job or career that garners their interest (Use of ICE). As they do so, they must determine the types of skills that are necessary. An example essay may be: ” My Goal is to Become an Executive Assistant: Do I Possess the Qualities Needed?”
Employability Skills Necessary for an Executive Assistant: Active Listening - Coordination- Judgement and Decision Making – Speaking – Writing – Reading Comprehension
After completing the pre-activities, I asked students to begin the process of writing their Employability Skills essay. The procedure is as follows:
First, students can research a career of their choice. (This could be an extension of ICE, a program which will be required for all students during the first 12 hours of enrollment beginning July 1, 2017.) They would then, via additional independent research, determine the employability skills needed for their chosen profession. (On the slide above, I have given a few examples of employability skills for an Executive Assistant.) Once students have determined the necessary employability skills needed for their chosen career, they would then need to asses which of these skills that they currently possess. One approach in accomplishing this task is to have students create their own pro and con list. Once the Pros and Cons are determined, students can then begin the process of writing their essay which will exhibit sound reasoning to address their topic.
Note: During their research, students may determine that they do not possess some necessary employability (or academic) skills. That is okay. At this point, they can address these weaknesses in the essay and express how they might rectify them. It is important for the students to understand that they will already have many skills; however, there may be many skills that will need to learned or practiced.

16. Personal Skills
INTEGRITY: Treating others with honesty, fairness and respect
DEPENDABILITY & RELIABILITY: Displaying responsible behaviors at work
ADAPTABILITY: Displaying the capability to adapt to new, different or changing requirements
PROFESSIONALISM: Maintaining a professional demeanor at work
Next, I looked at the second group of employability skills - Personal Skills - to see how they could be addressed in the Employability Skills Essay.
INITIATIVE: Demonstrating a willingness to work and seek out new work challenges

17. Addressing Personal Skills In the Essay Personal Skills Addressed:
Topic:
Identifying Hopes and Dreams
Learning Objective:
To help students begin to talk about the hopes and dreams they have for their lives as the starting point for career exploration
After students wrote and typed their essays, which address Workplace skills and digital literacy, I asked them to read their essays aloud. With a predetermined rubric, other students in the class not only assessed the academic quality of the essay, but also demonstrated Integrity, Professionalism, and Initiative through the use of constructive criticism. - I ask my students to read their essays whenever they are ready to do so. At first , I thought many students might not want to do this and that those scoring may not pay attention or take it seriously; however, I quickly found the opposite! The students were excited to present and the listeners/scorers were extremely constructive and respectful. Although I was happy to see this process work, I didn’t truly understand the meaningfulness of changing the prompt and implementing Work Place skills into the writing process until I had one student, who had been absent for some time, stop me during class to tell me he hadn’t read his essay. I immediately passed out the rubric . He read his essay; the class scored; he got immediate feedback. All this happened within five to six minutes. Not only did the student demonstrate Workplace Skills, but he also exhibited a great amount of pride and accomplishment.
Thus far, my Employability Skills Essay Assignment has addressed Applied, Workplace and Personal skills utilizing one activity/lesson. Now for the final workplace skill, People Skills.
Personal Skills Addressed:
INTEGRITY- DEPENDABILITY & RELIABILITY – PROFESSIONALISM – INITIATIVE

18. People Skills
TEAMWORK: Demonstrating the ability to work effectively with others
COMMUNICATION: Maintaining open lines of communication with others
RESPECT: Working effectively with those who have diverse backgrounds
These skills should look familiar! They align closely with Personal skills in that Personal Skills lead into People Skills. (If one has poor personal skills, it may be presumed that People Skills will also be lacking.) Teamwork and Respect align closely with Integrity and Professionalism.

19. Addressing People Skills in the Essay People Skills Addressed:
Topic:
Identifying Hopes and Dreams
Learning Objective:
To help students begin to talk about the hopes and dreams they have for their lives as the starting point for career exploration
People Skills Addressed:
Teamwork – Communication - Respect
Let’s go back to our essay… while having students evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of others’ essays through the predetermined rubric - respect and teamwork are addressed as well as verbal/speech communications skills. Everyone worked together as a team to create a better product….much like peer coaching/ teaching. Both Personal and People Skills are addressed simultaneously.

20. Sample Rubric Scoring Rubric for Oral Essay Presentations:   
PRESENCE
-body language & eye contact
-poise
LANGUAGE SKILLS
-correct usage
-appropriate vocabulary and grammar
-understandable
-spoken loud enough to hear easily
ORGANIZATION
-clear objectives
-logical structure
OVERALL IMPRESSION
-very interesting / very boring
-pleasant / unpleasant to listen to
-very good / poor communication
  TOTAL SCORE _______ / 20
An example of integrating academic and work place skills via a single rubric.
Presenter/Employee:
Work Place skills addressed: Verbal communication skills; presence, which is imperative in the interview process; written communications skills; organization; self confidence; professionalism; independence
Scorer/Employer:
Work Place skills addressed: Respect; communication - listening; initiative; decision making; professionalism; integrity; business fundamentals

21. Employability Essay Topics Teacher Created – Muncie Area Career Center
Hard work vs natural talent in the Workplace
Self discipline in the workplace
Work ethics – Good employee Traits
Employee dependability
Controlling emotions in the workplace
Dependability in the workplace
Managing your anger in the workplace
Communication in the workplace
Oral communication skills at work
Conclusion: Employability Skills essays topics can be used to enhance students’ motivation through meaningful research and writing examples which help them to not only persist in their academic endeavors, but also to obtain an understanding of skills needed to enter and retain employment.

22. Questions

23. Primary Sources Integrating Career Awareness
Song “Fast Car” lyric and music by Tracy Chapman
CTE Employability Skills Framework
“Expanding the Purposes of AE under WIOA”
Writing Prompts – Drop Down Under COABE

24. Dan DeVers: ddevers@dwd.in.gov
Thank You!
Dan DeVers: