Teaching to Develop Students' Communication Skills

I found the first source about The 7 Challenges Communication Skills Workbook to be insightful not just in the classroom, but in any environment that relies on communication. As I say that, I realize just how silly it sounds -- everyone needs to know how to communicate properly, regardless of whether your field or preferred track directly involves dealing and coordinating with other people. My favorite benefits were "more respect, "more comfortable with conflict" and "more peace of mind." For starters, the second benefit about more respect speaks to the way that we model for others how we would like to see them behave. It's essentially 'treat someone the way you would like to be treated' in practice. Per my thoughts on the first group discussion in this class, modeling is both a subtle and powerful way to influence others, particularly as an adult to a child. So, if we want our students to be compassionate and respectful communicators, we must walk the talk! In relation to the fourth benefit about becoming more comfortable with conflict, it is extremely crucial to me that my students understand and begin to adopt this. Of course, everyone has conflict and no one is immune to the problems that can arise from it, but what better way to help our students manage than to help them to understand it as a natural part of life? When we embrace conflict, and really listen to understand as opposed to respond, we can increase our confidences by engaging in "a dialogue of genuine give and take, and be able to help generate problem solutions that meet more of everyone's needs" (Rivers, 2012). And lastly, the final benefit I would aim to emphasize with my students is that effective communication creates "more peace of mind." Even young people carry stress, and in helping to promote communication as an area that students want to develop, we can explain to them the benefits of doing so for oneself. We cannot control others, and it's important children start to understand this from a young age, but it does not mean we do not have power within ourselves to respond in the best way for us.

Building off my last point, communication skills are furthered by one's ability to actively listen. Listening is something we tend to pass off as being as natural to us as breathing, but it isn't always that easy. In fact, it takes far more cognitive effort than one might realize. I like the idea in 8 Methods for Effectively Improving Student Communication Skills about asking students to read a portion of a text out loud and then reflect as a class about the speaker's intended message (Watanabe-Crockett, 2017). I think active listening takes practice before it becomes an automatic response and giving students ample opportunity to exercise that skill would benefit them in the long-run. Additionally, I would agree that teaching students about open-ended questions not only opens up (literally) the lines of communication, but allows them to hear multiple and varied responses to the same question. It is also a way of drawing information out of someone, particularly if they are shy or uncomfortable. I might challenge students to reword a question to make it open-ended, or, as suggested, put students in pairs and ask them to hold a conversation using only open-ended questions to gather information.