By Nelson Coulter
The BUSINESS of school is LEARNING! At Guthrie CSD we have chosen a pathway of MORE for the learning of our students; more
than the minimum requirements, more than the state’s curriculum, more than the
tested standards. Another of the five
dimensions of the Guthrie Graduate Profile, which has emerged over the last
several months as a commonly held aspiration for our students, is that we
intend for our graduates to be:
Effective Communicators
They are/can/have:
•
Confident and self-secure
•
Communicate in an articulate, effective, and efficient
manner
•
Critical listeners
•
Communicate by use of advancing technologies
In his book titled A Whole New Mind Daniel Pink makes a
rather compelling case that the folks who have the best chance of achieving
their life goals in the 21st century are those that can effectively
engage, collaborate, and communicate with other individuals and groups. The fundamental vehicle for successful
interpersonal engagement is effective communication skills.
Faculty members at Guthrie
CSD have determined to embed a purposeful curriculum of communication skills
enhancement into our day-to-day business in order to help our students leverage
the vast and rich opportunities that exist in our “connected” world. We are convinced that our students must
become skillful in expressing their own thinking through multiple media and
skillful in listening to (and actually “hearing”) the messages of others. In the words of the late Stephen Covey in his
book titled The 8th Habit,
we want our students to be successful in “finding their own voice and helping
others find theirs.” Through these
deliberate instructional processes educators at Guthrie believe our students
will develop more confidence and be more self-secure in the way they present
(and think of) themselves. When you
think about it, what activity is any more cognitively challenging than
carefully formulating and expressing one’s own thoughts, positions, opinions,
and knowledge in a way that is crystal clear to others?
Our full intention at Guthrie
CSD is to graduate students fully armed and prepared to compete in the world
marketplace of work and school and life in a way that will make them the “crème
of the crop” in any setting in which they choose to live and compete.
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