Curriculum to add life skills
Middle school adopting program on handshakes, etiquette
EL DORADO — The Amazing Shake will be at Washington Middle School next year.
Middle-school students will have the option to take a class next school year that covers “soft skills” such as handshakes, public speaking, dining etiquette, manners, debate and job interviews. The class is called the Amazing Shake, which is also the name of a national competition for students.
Alissa Rynders, who has been working to put the class together, said it is based on a program by Ron Clark at the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta. Clark was the Disney American Educator of the Year in 2000 and has written several books on education.
Rynders said that during her first year with the El Dorado School District, she visited the academy and observed how teaching is done at the school. Principal Jody Vines said the school has sent several groups of teachers to the academy and has another group going in May.
Clark’s classroom is set up with cinema-type seating.
“Their style, their techniques of working with these students are pretty incredible,” Vines said.
When the students correctly work out an algebra problem, for example, “he has a disco ball that comes down and starts spinning. They get up and dance, music starts to play — this is all hooked up in his classroom … then it shuts off, they sit down and he starts right back with the algebra again.”
Vines said that visiting teachers have the opportunity to watch multiple classes in this style before sitting down with teachers and students to talk to them about the teaching methods and subject matter.
As part of the academy, Clark started a competition called the Amazing Shake, which went national in 2018. Rynders said she got the idea of starting the Amazing Shake class at Washington Middle School when she saw videos on social media announcing the national competition, but she was already familiar with the school from her trip there.
While the plan is for part of the class to go to the national competition, both Rynders and Vines said there’s more to the class than the competition. It’s to teach the students to be ready to master the art of public speaking, proper dining etiquette and manners, as well as to acquire debate skills and handle job interviews, Rynders said.
Throughout the class, students will participate in mini-competitions to help prepare for the national competition. Vines said these might be used for students to earn points and see who is able to go to the national competition at the end of the year.
“They pull in CEOs from all the businesses there,” Rynders said. “They pull in the Atlanta Hawks CEO, and they’re asking interview questions of these kids. I’m going to hope we can pull some of that into our school just from our neighboring communities.”
Rynders hopes to bring in members of the community to help. Some of the possible involvement opportunities include listening to and critiquing student speeches, doing mock job interviews with students, and participating in a mock town hall.
She’s also looking at taking the students on a field trip to the state Capitol and to visit with the governor about speech delivery, setting up debates for the students, practicing professional handshakes and practicing proper dining etiquette. She said these are skills “that they’re going to need in the future, in the real world.”
Rynders said she hopes the students become leaders in the community.
“Even though they’re in fifth grade, that’s something that’s going to carry them on throughout [life]. When they’re 16 and applying for jobs, they’re going to need that.”
One of the topics that isn’t included in the competition, but Rynders has in the curriculum for the class, is financial literacy. This would include topics such as ways to create and stick to a budget. Vines said they will use a program called Economics Arkansas, which is a statewide nonprofit that provides resources for teaching students about finances.