Tomorrow's Careers Are Built in Today's Classrooms: Giving Students the Skills That Matter

Sometimes the lessons that matter most after graduation are often the ones schools never formally teach. High school special education teacher and work-based learning coordinator, Shannel Williams shares what happens when students can finish the assignment but can't ask for help, take feedback, or handle a conflict.

Education for Life Beyond the Classroom

Preparation for life after graduation requires more than academic knowledge. Students must communicate their needs, manage frustration, collaborate effectively, and make responsible decisions. For instance, a young person entering the workforce may understand an assignment but struggle to seek clarification or respond to feedback. Likewise, a student with strong academic performance may need support in navigating conflict or recognizing the consequences of their decisions.

As a high school special education teacher, work-based learning coordinator, and CityGov magazine contributor, I recognize that education must intentionally address these responsibilities. Schools significantly influence how young people interact with their families, workplaces, and communities. Preparing students for these environments requires opportunities to develop social-emotional competence and ethical judgment alongside academic learning.

Social-emotional and character development (SECD) offers an integrated framework. By connecting social-emotional learning (SEL) with character education (CE), schools support students in developing both the skills needed to navigate challenges and the values that guide their actions.

Connecting Skills With Ethical Purpose

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL, n.d.) identifies five interconnected SEL competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. These competencies support understanding emotions, setting goals, considering different perspectives, maintaining relationships, and evaluating choices.

Character education emphasizes how people understand and practice values such as honesty, fairness, respect, and responsibility. Literature offers one way to connect these values with social-emotional learning. Arda Tuncdemir and Napoli (2025) explored how children’s literature and related instructional activities shaped preservice teachers’ knowledge and attitudes toward SEL. Although their study focused on future PreK–4 teachers, its approach offers ideas for age-appropriate discussions of emotions, relationships, and ethical choices.

SEL and CE intersect in areas including empathy, responsibility, and ethical decision-making. Integrating these approaches enables educators to explicitly connect skills with values. For example, a student may use communication skills to express a disagreement while applying fairness to consider another person’s perspective. Self-management facilitates the completion of challenging assignments, while honesty ensures accurate reporting of results. Through SECD, students practice effective action and reflect on the broader significance of their behavior.

The Evidence for Intentional Instruction

Research supports investing in social-emotional learning. Durlak et al. (2011) examined 213 school-based SEL studies involving 270,034 students from kindergarten through high school. Compared with control groups, participants demonstrated improvements in social-emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance. The analysis reported an average difference of 11 percentile points in academic achievement.

This finding requires careful interpretation. It represents an average across diverse programs and settings, rather than a guaranteed improvement for every student. The evidence applies specifically to the SEL interventions studied, not to all possible combinations of SEL and CE initiatives. Schools should use this research to inform implementation strategies and continuously evaluate their own practices.

International evidence adds another perspective. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2024) examined social-emotional skills across participating international sites and reported associations with academic success, well-being, and career aspirations. These associations do not establish causation, but they demonstrate the relevance of these skills across different educational and cultural contexts.

Research also highlights the importance of peer relationships and implementation. Pollak et al. (2024) evaluated an SEL program for students ages 9–12 transitioning to secondary school. Their main analysis found improvements in social skills, peer connectedness, and happiness in classrooms completing the program compared with waitlist-control classrooms. Outcomes varied with implementation, reinforcing the need for consistent delivery and educator support. These findings offer useful planning considerations, while high school applications require age-appropriate adaptation and local evaluation.

Collectively, these studies support prioritizing social-emotional development within education. They also underscore the need for thoughtful implementation and realistic expectations.

Assets Students Need to Live and Work Together

Developing social-emotional competence and character requires identifying the specific assets students will use in daily life. I recommend prioritizing the following areas:

• Self-awareness and self-advocacy: Recognizing emotions, strengths, needs, and values; requesting help; and communicating personal boundaries.

• Self-management and perseverance: Managing frustration, organizing responsibilities, setting goals, and continuing through challenges.

• Empathy and respect: Considering others’ experiences and recognizing dignity across cultural, linguistic, and disability differences.

• Communication and cooperation: Listening carefully, expressing ideas clearly, sharing responsibility, and resolving disagreements constructively.

• Honesty and accountability: Reporting information accurately, acknowledging mistakes, and following through on commitments.

• Fairness and civic courage: Recognizing exclusion, considering competing needs, and taking informed action when others are treated unfairly.

The application of these assets varies across relationships and contexts. Friends and classmates benefit from empathy and constructive conflict resolution. Families are strengthened when young people communicate their needs and accept responsibility for shared commitments. In the workplace, employers and colleagues value reliability, cooperation, and honest responses to errors.

Local communities depend on individuals who listen, participate actively, and consider the needs of others. At national and international levels, perspective-taking and respect for cultural differences facilitate cooperation despite disagreements. These considerations justify providing students with opportunities to apply SECD beyond isolated lessons or classroom settings.

Inclusion Must Shape the Approach

For students with disabilities, SECD should be integrated with transition planning and meaningful preparation for adulthood. In my professional experience, I emphasize self-advocacy, communication, and opportunities to practice workplace responsibilities. Identifying a skill within a plan is only the first step; students also require targeted instruction, feedback, and practical opportunities to apply these skills.

Consider a proposed job-interview activity. Students could identify their strengths, explain the support they need, practice receiving feedback, and discuss an ethical workplace dilemma. Teachers could provide visual prompts, accessible text, modeled responses, assistive communication, and repeated practice. These supports allow students to work toward shared purposes through approaches suited to their individual needs.

Access is as important as instruction. School resources and community partnerships influence which students receive work-based learning opportunities. School-based simulations and supported community projects can extend practice to students without external placements.

Educators should critically assess how they interpret student behavior. Characteristics such as eye contact, speech fluency, and quiet compliance are not definitive indicators of character. Students may demonstrate respect, responsibility, and engagement through diverse behaviors. An inclusive approach acknowledges these differences and supports students in expressing their needs and making meaningful contributions.

Make SECD Part of Everyday Learning

SECD can be incorporated into academic instruction through intentional activities. In science classes, students practice accurate reporting, shared responsibility, and respectful disagreement regarding evidence. Literature discussions foster perspective-taking and ethical reasoning. Group projects explicitly teach role negotiation, seeking support, and constructive responses to conflict.

Arda Tuncdemir and Napoli’s (2025) study connects literature to educator preparation for SEL. For high school instruction, I would adapt this approach through age-appropriate texts that invite students to examine characters’ emotions, motivations, and decisions. Students could discuss how a character responds to unfair treatment, whether a choice demonstrates responsibility, or how a conflict might be resolved differently. These are proposed applications rather than outcomes established by the study.

Adults are responsible for modeling the expectations they teach. Students benefit from observing educators who acknowledge mistakes, listen respectfully, and apply expectations consistently. When adult behavior aligns with classroom instruction, the credibility of the school’s values increases. Educators also need preparation and ongoing support to integrate SEL effectively into instruction. The implementation findings reported by Pollak et al. (2024) highlight the significance of program delivery.

Families and community partners play a vital role in shaping SECD initiatives. Schools can solicit family perspectives through accessible meetings, surveys, and ongoing communication. Community organizations and employers can contribute by developing authentic scenarios and providing supported practice opportunities.

Begin With a Practical Plan

A district interested in SECD could begin with a one-year pilot in two high schools. The planning team should include general and special education teachers, counselors, students, families, and community partners. Initial tasks include identifying priorities, reviewing existing practices, and establishing a budget for training and accessible materials. The pilot program should incorporate explicit instruction, opportunities for practice within academic lessons, and ongoing staff support. Evaluation should assess whether staff delivered the planned instruction, the extent of student participation, and students’ experiences with the initiative. Evidence such as student belonging surveys, portfolios, individualized goals, and examples of collaborative problem-solving can provide valuable insights.

Results should guide improvement. A small pilot without a comparison design cannot establish that SECD caused every observed change, but it can identify implementation challenges and inform decisions about expansion.

Grades open doors, but soft skills keep them open. Our students will soon be asking for help at work, handling conflict at home, and showing up for their neighbors, and the practice they get today decides how ready they'll be. Start small and start now: pick one skill, connect it to one value, and give students real chances to use it. Educators, make room for that practice in your lessons. Families, keep it going at home. Employers and community leaders, open your doors. The future won't wait, so neither should we.

References

Arda Tuncdemir, T. B., & Napoli, M. (2025). Exploring the impact of preservice teachers’ knowledge and attitudes toward social and emotional learning (SEL) through children’s literature. Early Childhood Education Journal, 53(8), 2921–2932. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-024-01758-x

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (n.d.). What is the CASEL framework? https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/

Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2024). Social and emotional skills for better lives: Findings from the OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills 2023. https://doi.org/10.1787/35ca7b7c-en

Pollak, I., Stiehl, K. A. M., Birchwood, J., Schrank, B., Zechner, K. A., Wiesner, C., & Woodcock, K. A. (2024). Promoting peer connectedness through social-emotional learning: Evaluating the intervention effect mechanisms and implementation factors of a social-emotional learning program for 9- to 12-year-olds. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 53(1), 89–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01871-x