Nov 04 2024 23 mins
This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Soft Skills and Leadership Training with Ignite4Impact.
Soft Skills and Leadership Training with Ignite4Impact
Want to give your teens some biblically based soft skills that build compassion and leadership skills? Join Vicki and Michelle Koles of Ignite 4 Impact to discuss ways her program equips them to be the world-changers of the next generation.
Vicki met Michelle Koles at the digital Homeschooling Teen Successfully Summit and was excited to find someone who had a full program that develops social skills, compassion skills and leadership skills. These are ALL vital skills that our teens need for their own success personally. Not only that, homeschoolers need these skills so that they can fully take their place in the world after they graduate.
About Michelle Koles of Ignite4Impact
Michelle holds a Master’s in Education, Special Education Leadership and Teaching. She has been in education for twenty-five years. She has done lots of things in education over the years. For instance, she ran a Montessori school when her oldest child was young and taught college classes.
Her oldest child
Michelle’s first born was bright and curious, so at two years old, she started teaching him at home, reading and, and letters and different things. They also loved going on field trips together. This gave Michelle an early taste of homeschooling!
The next two children changed the story
Then Michelle and her husband adopted two kids. One of these children had medical problems and fetal alcohol syndrome. He was having a big struggle in middle school, made worse by his medical problems affecting his learning and abilities.
Finally, Michelle said, “enough is enough. We can’t do this anymore. I’m just gonna homeschool him!”
Homeschooling has been going great for Michelle and her son! Like many of us homeschooling parents, we find that our teens can get a lot done! Not only that, but he’s learning so much and at a much (as many people realize) at a much faster and easier pace.
Now, her son your son goes with her when she teaches at a local homeschool organization. So homeschooling and homeschool-community involvement kind of just happened. As Michelle says, “you know, like God directing your path!”
Michelle’s program, Ignite4Impact
Ignite 4 Impact came out of work she was doing with her son and the local homeschool community. She saw the need for soft skills compassion skills and leadership skills not only with her son and his friends but also, her husband saw deficits in these skills in the young college students he was hiring at his job.
Michelle noticed that it is not difficult teach young people how to do the job. However, it is harder to teach them skills like:
- being flexible
- being on time
- time management
- working together as a team
- problem solving
- thinking on your feet
In fact, research shows that “85% of job success is related to having well-developed soft skills and people skills”. (Cambridge University)
When young people loose their jobs in the first eighteen months of employment, it is not usually because they cannot handle the actual job. Rather, it is because they are coming in late, making excuses for things, not working together well with colleagues.
So, during Covid lockdown, Michelle took the courses she was teaching her son and the local homeschoolers and created a digital program to teach, from a biblical viewpoint, about soft skills, compassion and leadership skills.
Soft skills and compassion skills in action
During Covid lockdown, Michelle and her son practiced soft skills and compassion skills in several ways:
They helped out their community by running errands for neighbors.
They brought coffee and snacks to overworked hospital staff. Because the hospital cafeterias were closed, so the staff did not have access to like snacks and coffee. So Michelle and her son did a fundraiser and with the help of a local coffee distributor and a local farm, dropped off goodies that helped keep the staff going during those hard times.
To celebrate her son’s sixteenth birthday, he wanted to host his own charity game tournament. So, he had these local mom pop businesses supporting his idea along with individuals who donated to the cause. Then, participants played the game all day long and learn how that whole process worked, learn how to talk to adults. He donated the proceeds to a special education program and the local food bank.
Ignite4Impact is born
Thus, with her (and her son’s) love and passion for service she created an online organization. Check out their mission statement:
Ignite4Impact helps young people learn and apply valuable soft skills to build a strong foundation for success. We provide lessons, activities and guides that will help your teens discover these skills. Our program gets teens into amazing team building lessons as they learn these skills to become effective teammates as they create and run project to make an impact on themselves and the world.
When they did the first big global program, eleven countries were represented
The teens in that first program were joined by experts from around the world. The young people learned soft skills as they were developing a meaningful project to make an impact. These teens created projects like:
- Helping communities that had a lack of electricity
- Creating sustainable composting to their community
The group program is now online and includes twelve modules
Each module has a different soft skill to develop.
- Teens start with a journal writing prompt with a Bible verse connection, followed by a discussion.
- Teens learn that they are part of one body in Christ, how to be a leader and how to work with their heart.
- Ignite 4 Impact’s key verse reminds teens that they are to be a light on the hill. To illustrate this idea, their logo is a candle light on the hill.
- (In fact, Michelle’s fifteen year old and a friend designed Ignite 4 Impact’s entire brand package.)
- Next, teens in a group have fun with an icebreaker.
- This is a game that they play that where they are learning the soft skill.
- Then, there is a discussion about what they learned
- Next, teens practice their soft skills as they work on building their service project from scratch.
- They also take a skills assessment and work on their spiritual gifts.
- At the end project the teens get together as a team or individuals to do a reflection.
- They learn about how to do an effective reflection- they quickly reflect on what happened and discuss changes they would do next time
Click here for more information on the twelve-module program from Ignite4Impact.
Ignite4Impact has freebie activities to download!
Teens learn soft skills with these free, engaging activities! Michelle also has activities for younger children.
You can contact Michelle Koles
- at [email protected]
- Check out her Facebook page: Ignite4Impact
Give your teens some biblically-based, soft skills, compassion skills and leadership skills!
If you are looking for simple social skills for elementary-aged children, also check out 7SistersHomeschool’s Social Skills for Children.
Thanks to Seth Tillman for editing this episode!
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