Oltjana MolishtariProfessor SaltouridesESL 169Reading Response #102/07/2018In her article, “To solve the skills gap in hiring, create expectations in the classroom,” Charlotte Kent argues that to have proper skills to be successful in the workforce, students should learn the value of some strong rules during academic life. For her it is important that students know the value of some soft skills like self-motivation, work ethic, promptness, time management, suitability, and responsibility.
She approaches those important requirements to her students in the classroom. Kent explains her punctuality to her students as a valuable lesson for their future career. Furthermore, she gives an example from her experience when she was working as a person accountable to hire people in her department. She noticed that most successful people were the ones that possess those soft skills, and others remained in the same post for years. After this experience she strongly reinforced the value of learning those skills to her students. The author concludes that in the end students were grateful for her punctual rules, because they really understand that those are good lessons for their future work challenges.Generally, there are some strong points of this argument.
There are other points that are questionable. The author uses potent evidence from different surveys, studies, and her personal experience to support her thesis. She emphasizes the importance that teachers’ demands and teaching standards have to prepare students for their working world. At this aspect, the reader understands the ability to gain some strong soft skills during academic life and after that adopting these skills in their working world will make things easier in their future. On the other hand, flexibility, autonomy, and humanity with students is not necessarily a bad teaching practice or do not help students to gain those skills.
In addition, college students are adults so they may have other responsibilities in their real world and extra pressure can cause anxiety or depression for them. Certainly, one thing is true that teachers’ lessons and standards are valuable for all college students.
