Essential Skills

What essential skills do you need?

What essential skills do you need for work?

In raising children, the greatest asset we can give them is simply to prepare them to be an adult through essential skills. I want my children to be contributors to their society, to be lifelong learners, to magnify their talents and gifts in every way and be happy. I often seek the advice of other parents and professionals about what they believe are the greatest assets and characteristics or traits which will help them throughout life or a work ethic.

What is work ethic?

“Work ethics include not only how one feels about their job, career or vocation, but also how one does his/her job or responsibilities. This involves attitude, behavior, respect, communication, and interaction; how one gets along with others. Work ethics demonstrate many things about whom and how a person is.” (Quoted from Philosophy.org)

So, what are some skills that employers are searching for?

• communication skills -both verbally and in writing
• collaboration skills with others or the ability to work both alone and in a team
• knowing where to gather information
• understanding quantitative information (statistics and numbers)
• problem solving
• asking questions

I quickly wrote down each of these attributes and pondered them. Each of these skills could be taught as children and expounded upon as they got older. How can we teach these work ethics which are in demand? First, simply live the example of each one. Strive to be the embodiment of these skills.

By Tracy Atkinson

Tracy Atkinson, mother of six, lives in the Midwest with her husband. She is a teacher, having taught elementary school to higher education, holding degrees in elementary education and a master’s in higher education. Her passion is researching, studying and investigating the attributes related to self-directed learners. She has published several titles, including Calais: The Annals of the Hidden, Lemosa: The Annals of the Hidden, Book Two, Rachel’s 8 and Securing Your Tent. She is currently working on a non-fiction text exploring the attributes of self-directed learners: The Five Characteristics of Self-directed Learners.