From awkward group projects to job interviews, communication is the life skill students will use daily, but rarely get taught. In the final episode of my “Life Skills Your Students Should Master” series, we’re diving into healthy communication life skills - the kind that makes a lasting impact on students’ personal and professional lives. If you missed last week’s episode on time management or the one before that on budgeting, be sure to check those out too!

In this episode, I’ll share why communication is a must-have life skill, how it ties into ASCA mindsets and behaviors, and my favorite hands-on methods to help students practice. Whether it’s role-playing tricky social situations or handling difficult conversations, I’m offering practical ways to get students comfortable with communicating, no matter how uncomfortable the topic.

Resources Mentioned:

• Resource: Communicating Feelings Classroom Lesson
• Resource: Soft Skills Bundle  
• Resource: Healthy Relationships Classroom Lesson
• Free Resource: New Counselor Podcast Playlist
• ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors
• Podcast: Episode 165, Life Skills Your Students Should Master [Part 1: Budgeting Basics]
• Podcast: Episode 166, Life Skills Your Students Should Master [Part 2: Time Management]
• Leave your review for High School Counseling Conversations on Apple Podcasts

Connect with Lauren:

• Sign up for the free, 3-day prep for High School Counseling Job Interviews https://counselorclique.com/interviews
• Visit my TpT store https://counselorclique.com/shop
• Send me a DM on Instagram @counselorclique https://instagram.com/counselorclique
• Follow me on Facebook https://facebook.com/counselorclique
• Send me an email mailto:lauren@counselorclique.com
• Join the Clique Collaborative http://cliquecollab.com

Full show notes on website: https://counselorclique.com/episode167

We've talked about budgeting and time management as

our first two important life skills. So where does that bring

us for number three? Healthy communication skills. I almost

called it conflict resolution skills, because I felt like that

was really important, but I went with a more all encompassing

term. If you missed our first two episodes in this series of

life skills every high school student needs to master, or at

least be familiar with before they leave high school, head

back to the last two episodes of High School Counseling

Conversations to listen. I've linked them in the show notes,

but you can just as easily head back to the show and binge them

in order.

You got into this profession to make a difference in your

students' lives, but you're spread thin by all of the things

that keep getting added to your to do list. I can't create more

hours in the day, but I can invite you into my counselor

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help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your

students. I'm Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype

girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program

and remind you of how much you love your job.

Healthy communication skills find themselves presenting as

important in our homes, in our schools, in our workplaces, in

our relationships, and literally in everyday interactions with

strangers and people we have to or get to encounter each day.

When we get into communication skills, these definitely fall

into the social skills of the behaviors in our ASCA mindsets

and behaviors list. Man, when I read that column, it was just

hard to pick one or two.

If I were you and I was setting out to teach or nurture

communication skills with my students, I just scroll down

that list myself and pick the best two or three that

correspond to whatever I was specifically teaching or kind of

what outcomes I wanted to see. A lot of key characteristics in

these social skills involve interacting with people who are

different from you, possibly figuring out how to do that

while you're on a team, interacting in ways that are

effective and meaningful, those are kind of like some of the

themes. I'm confident that the ways that we choose to

communicate with others will either set us on a trajectory

that allows us to further positive relationships or cut us

off socially from relationships that could be really life giving

and fruitful, like we have a decision to make and a path to

choose to go down.

I think it's important to keep in mind that we counselors

probably have a very healthy perspective of how to

communicate, what healthy communication looks like, how

you'd respond when you found yourself in a really toxic

place. At least, you'd probably be able to recognize these

things. And we have students who very rarely have seen positive

examples of this. Their norm may be something that we would tell

them to run really far from, but they don't have the skills to

kind of sort through that.

Sometimes the best and healthiest relationships they're

experiencing are at school. I just think like what a privilege

it is to be able to speak into those and show them love and

care and support in this way, by the way that we use our words to

communicate with each other and care for each other.

Healthy communication is important to practice, even when

it's hard or challenging or the other person doesn't always seem

to deserve it. You know what I'm talking about, even people who

you love sometimes don't feel like they deserve healthy

communication from you because you're getting a little

frustrated. What do you do when you're really frustrated on the

phone with someone on customer service with a company, and

you're not getting what you think you fairly deserve? What

if the store doesn't seem like they're honoring their return

policy, but you didn't even wear the shirt that you're trying to

return? I can think of a lot of justice situations that would

fire me up and frustrate me, but you catch more flies with honey.

So let's talk about how to communicate in a way that gets

your point across and is healthy, so that you can at

least set the example for other people, whether you feel

justified in the way you're talking or not.

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My favorite way to practice communication skills with

students is 100% role play and scenarios. It would be really

hard to master strong communication skills without

ever practicing any communicating to get there. With

role playing scenarios, you could have them read full on

scripts. You could have them pull scenarios from cards, like

out of a basket or a hat. You could have a conversation

starter and then somebody has to answer the question and then ask

another question to somebody else in the group, or they ask

another conversation starter to the next person. You could have

challenging scenarios that really push them to have to

troubleshoot, either individually or with a group

think.

Some of my favorite and most fun memories are seeing kids really

have that light bulb moment from a really challenging social

scenario card from some sort of classroom lesson I was doing

where they had to communicate their feelings, or pretend like

they're talking to adults, sort out friendship issues or bring

up something difficult with a boss. Even if they've never been

in that scenario before, it really makes them think and kind

of evaluate what their own values are, and practice saying

something potentially hard. It always gets rowdy, and a lot of

times they get stumped, but like in the best ways as they're

trying to come up with their answers for these scenarios or

questions.

You can probably think back to when you started as a high

school counselor and you hated calling angry parents back. Or

maybe that's still you. I don't know who loves doing that, but

it just doesn't go away just because you avoid it. You know

you have to step into that, even though it's messy, and

inevitably, no matter how much you practice, it is still

complicated, and so is every relationship and conversation,

because we're dealing with humans. You may never be

perfect. I'm gonna be willing to guess you're never going to be

perfect, but the more you practice, the more confidence

you can have as you build in yourself, some confidence and

some more self awareness that you bring to the table.

I'm saying this to us as counselors, but also like you

can communicate this to students. The same way that we

are building our confidence and self awareness, we want our

students to have those same skill sets. We want them to

build that self efficacy muscle like it has to be practiced and

strengthened and master that self advocacy skill that'll push

them farther into successful relationships at home, work,

school and into the real world.

I'm going to link a few resources that I mentioned were

my favorites, so that you can poke around and see what might

be helpful for you and your students. Don't be afraid to use

chat GPT and get really specific for some scripts that can help

you facilitate some really good conversations in terms of

scenarios with your students around some of these topics. Go

specific in each of these categories, and I think you'll

get something good that comes out of it.

Let's help our high school students not live with regrets

of not practicing or mastering these three life skills sooner.

Thanks for listening to this three part series all about some

important life skills your students can be working on now

while they're still in high school. Those were budgeting,

time management and healthy communication.

The greatest two ways that you can show your support for this

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Thanks for listening to today's episode of High School

Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today

can be found in the show notes and also at

counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you

listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode.

Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me

a DM @counselorclique, that's C, L, I, Q, U, E. I'll see you next

week.