16 essential life skills students should know before leaving high school

Here is my list of things that every able bodied student should know before leaving high school.  Some of these are obvious and many of these life skills are being taught one way or another in most schools today.  However, I occasionally hear or see examples of people who have slipped through the cracks and haven’t learned these essential life skills.  These are the life skills in my opinion that every student should know before leaving high school.

1. Read phonetically

I sometimes see kids who have not learned how to read phonetically struggle.  I wonder how they’re going to manage as they get older.  At least if they learn phonetics, they might be able to figure out how to pronounce it correctly.

2. Manual Dictionary operation

It always amazes me how lazy kids of today have gotten.  They’ll ask someone for a definition of a word or they’ll look it up on the internet but they won’t go to a dictionary.  Whenever my kids asked the meaning of a word, if there was a dictionary around I would tell them to look it up.  Not because I didn’t know, but because I wanted them to have the experience of doing it manually.  There were those times that I didn’t know,  so I would tell my kids let’s look it up together.

3. Basic Thesaurus operation

A very useful tool for creative writing and trying to explain complex ideas by finding synonyms and antonyms.

4. Basic spelling

It’s important to get the spelling correct and to use the word in its proper context.  Some favorites are (their, there, and they’re).

5. Basic grammar

How we say something is sometimes more important than what we say.  If it gets lost in the translation, then we FAIL to communicate.

6. Library Usage

Every student should know what the Dewey Decimal System is and how to lookup a book.  Once the student has the book’s address, they should be able to navigate the library to find it on the shelves.

7. Tell analog time

Notice I didn’t say tell time.  Of course everyone should learn to tell time.  The problem is that most of the time, everyone is happy that the student learns how to tell digital time because it seems like everybody has a cell phone or digital alarm clock.  But what if you’re in a situation where there is no power.  Only mechanical clocks were functional.  How would everybody tell time?

8. Time Management

Speaking of time.  Students should learn how to break up an assignment into smaller manageable parts so they will proactive in completing their assignments before they’re due.

9. Practical Math Skills

Obviously the basics are Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division.  Some other useful skills are measurement, fractions, percentage, area.

10. Read and Write cursive handwriting

I am afraid cursive handwriting is becoming a lost art in some parts of the country.  Cursive handwriting is a skill that everyone should learn and master.

11. Basic Finances

We have a whole generation of kids whose parents have not taught their kids about finances.  They leave it to the school system.  I’m not sure if the kids just weren’t listening or if it’s not being taught.

I think students should learn these skills:

  • How to save
  • How write a check and balance a checkbook.
  • How to create a budget
  • How to avoid debt
  • How to get out of debt
  • How to handle money
  • How to make change

12. Communication skills

Students should learn Public Speaking, Presentation, Social interaction, Networking.  Basically how to work together to accomplish things in the real world.

13. Career skills

Students need to know how hiring happens in the real world. They should learn these skills (Professionalism, Employment Applications, Resume writing, Interviewing, Salary Negotiation)

14. Core Values, Life Mission & Vision

Discovering who a person is and what their mission is life is very important to having a successful career.  Many times, the students have no clue, they take a skills test and that becomes their life.  But their life could become so much more if they better understood who they are.

15. Career Vision & Mission

Discovering what a student is good at and what they might be successful at is a good thing.  But many times I think we fall short in that we don’t help the student enough in helping them discover their Career Vision and Mission, what it takes to accomplish their vision.

16. Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a visual method for representing ideas that inspires creativity and helps people to organize their thoughts more effectively.  It was developed by Tony Buzan and has been proven to help all students to improve their ability to learn.

Do you agree or disagree with my list?  Did I miss some?  Was I too nice? 😉

Please reply to this post and share your opinions.

About Wes Johnson

Wes Johnson is a software engineer with extensive experience developing desktop applications. He has also developed firmware for consumer electronics and OEM boards. His experties is C and C++ programming.
This entry was posted in Blog and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

10 Responses to 16 essential life skills students should know before leaving high school

  1. I love your list and agree with all of the items. I think the hardest one is the career mission…I’m 45 and I’m still working on mine!

  2. michelle says:

    wes i agree. i am still struggling with the career path. but then again i made a career change 18 years ago to stay involved with my son. afraid i may not desreve a raise though. he does balance his checkbook. LOL. i think you almost inspired me to work on my creative writting again….hmmm

  3. Daniel Johnson says:

    Ha! I remember when my dad used to tell me to go look it up in the dictionary… Oh wait! This is my Dad’s blog! holy moly, how did I stumble across this!? Just kidding, that was probably one of the biggest things I remember about growing up with you, that and cursive sentences, so I’ll always remember how to write in cursive. I finally learned about finances! Go Dave Ramsey.

  4. Ray says:

    Great list. I vote personal finances.

  5. The only time I ever write in cursive is when I sign my name. While having a signature is important, I don’t necessarily think it’s ridiculously important to learn how to write in cursive. Legible handwriting is important, but print is fine.

    • Wes Johnson says:

      I think at least learning how to read cursive is a very important skill. Kind of like basic literacy. I agree, not everybody uses cursive in their daily life, but it’s still a good skill to have.

  6. Kristen says:

    I noticed that at the end of your list of things, you forgot proper punctuation when you asked if you were too nice. 🙂 I don’t mean to be mean….love you dad 🙂

Leave a Reply to Daniel Johnson Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *