Fill The Gap - Part II

In last week’s blog post, I highlighted what credible research reveals about the state of educational success in the USA and how low educational outputs stack up to the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the educational outputs of other countries. That was depressing news; now, here is a hopeful challenge.

Because reforming the entire educational system in the USA would be a daunting task, what if we worked to ‘fill the gaps’ instead? According to research and also colleagues’ and my observations while teaching in higher education seeing first-hand the people coming out of K-12 schools, here are the specific gaps needed to curate an effective adult life to be college, work, life ready:

* relevant, useful computer skills - just because people can use a smartphone doesn’t mean they know how to use computers

*relevant, useful math skills - business math: add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate %, make $ change

* relevant, useful writing skills - including tone, style, grammar, vocabulary

*relevant cultural intelligence / knowledge - historical events and their meaning, artists and their works, literary and film references that are used in common allusions

* financial literacy skills - to break the debt habit before it starts or to get out of debt and to stay out of debt

* lifestyle discovery, identifying skills, passions - no,high school guidance counselors don’t usually help with this and often parents are clueless about how to help their children learn how they are designed

* time management skills

* social protocols skills- modern and time-tested manners

* decision-making skills

* professionalism skills

Old ways won’t open new doors *, so, Re-Imagine Life Coaching is working on creating ways to ‘fill the gaps.’ I would like to hear from business owners on what skills, knowledge, and attitude gaps they are seeing in their employees and how they are working to ‘fill the gaps.’ Next week, I will share some resources to address some of these gaps. reimaginelife22@gmail.com.

* Because so many people have coined this phrase, it is not attributed.