Growth mindset and resilience. Effective teamwork. Cognitive flexibility.
Those are among the list of skills that major employers—including Apple, Delta Airlines, Microsoft, and Southwest Airlines—said they want schools to impart to the future workforce.
That doesn’t come as a surprise to Karen VanAusdal, the senior director of practice for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a national organization that advocates for social-emotional learning.
“SEL skills are absolutely the skills that employers are seeking, and that research has shown allow you to persist in college,” said VanAusdal during a Feb. 13 Education Week K-12 Essentials Forum on social-emotional learning priorities and practices. “I think, especially in this era of AI and technology, they become all the more vital, and that we will be looking for folks who can truly think critically, who can collaborate with others, who can take others’ perspectives. These are the skills that are going to become increasingly valuable.”
However, that perspective does come at a time when social-emotional learning is being questioned and criticized by some parents and politicians. While earlier political arguments during the waning days of the pandemic claimed SEL was a way to inject progressive ideology into classrooms, a new missive from the U.S. Department of Education is homing in on SEL as a means of discrimination. At the same time, a prominent conservative activist group has launched a campaign to animate parent activism around SEL.
‘Empathetic listening’ is a key skill many companies want employees to have
That pushback is happening despite the support among many senior executives from major American companies for the principles and skills that are taught in SEL programs, such as empathy, persistence, and problem solving.
VanAusdal noted that she had heard recently from a leader of a multi-billion-dollar business that “empathetic listening is the key skill that he is looking for in his employees.”
SEL skills have gotten more policy play as states and districts flesh out what they think students should know and be able to do upon leaving high school through “portrait of a graduate” initiatives, VanAusdal said.
Explaining how SEL can help students prepare for the working world may help more families get behind its approaches and initiatives, noted Trish Schaffer, the director of multi-tiered systems of support for Nevada’s Washoe County school district.
“For as long as we’ve been talking about SEL in schools, we’ve been connecting it to employability and successful life outcomes. And that it is a bipartisan issue,” Schaffer said. “These are the skills that [students] need to engage in life.”
