Teaching post-pandemic students is not the same. The 2020 lockdown had devastating effects which are still rippling through into today’s classrooms. Due to a lack of socialisation in their formative years, students now lack the key life skills to be able to communicate, problem-solve and empathise with others. The education industry is struggling with the huge task of not only catching students up academically but also socially. In this blog, I’ll be discussing a few ways in which we can support students to develop their social skills to become well-rounded individuals.

Classroom Behaviour

Any teacher who’s been on social media has seen numerous hilarious sketches about teaching in 2024. I watched one today about a teacher setting a new record for how many times they said ‘sit down’ (which I think we can all relate to!). As funny as these are, they are sadly the reality of today’s classrooms. Student’s attention spans have shortened (which social media has played a huge part in) and therefore are unable to maintain focus and motivation- two very important life skills. I have also found that the majority of students are not very resilient and will give up if things get challenging. As educators, we need to make time to teach students the skills they need to thrive in life. Scheduling a small amount of time every week to focus on a life skill would be an amazing investment in your students. By micro-learning these skills, students are more likely to focus and absorb the information. This standalone lesson I created on resilience works perfectly!

Social Behaviour

I don’t know about you but I’m finding students are now lacking the basic social skills to be able to effectively communicate with each other. When they disagree, they struggle to communicate their feelings which often leads to emotional or physical distress. I have noticed more now than ever that when students work in a group, they seem to struggle to collaborate and communicate. I teach Drama so this has become very clear since returning to school after the lockdown. Of course, our student’s brains are still developing so they are still learning how to navigate different situations but it seems they are struggling to navigate simple collaborative tasks. I often try to get students to work with different people as this builds up their resilience and they learn how to communicate with others.

Well-Rounded Individual

I believe that school is a powerful place. It is somewhere where knowledge can be gained, not just for academic success, but for life. So, how can we equip students with the correct life skills so they can thrive and not just survive? And when do we find time for this? School is an extremely busy place where everything needed to happen yesterday so how do we find the time to teach our students how to be well-rounded individuals?

One idea is using time in the morning to go through different skills as a class or a whole year group. In the UK, assemblies work really well to educate large groups of students about a skill or to celebrate a notable event. Another opportunity is to use our registration time to give students a small lesson in life skills. If you feel there isn’t enough time in the mornings, you could always break a lesson into even smaller bite-sized chunks that you could present to students in the morning or the afternoon throughout a week. I use these character education lessons that I created to support students in becoming well-rounded individuals.

I hope one day, life skills are viewed on an equal level, if not viewed as more important than academic skills within schools and society. Of course, having knowledge is amazing but being a kind, respectful and hard-working individual is far more important.