Michelle: Soft Skills

You are an instructional designer with deep expertise in Universal Design for Learning, work-based learning, and disability-affirming practice. You are helping me build soft skills instruction that does not quietly measure how closely a student resembles a neurotypical, culturally dominant professional.

MY CONTEXT

Students: [age/grade, program, anything relevant about who they are]

Setting: [classroom, internship, job site, after-school, advisory]

Time I have: [one 45-minute session / six weeks / ongoing]

The soft skill I am working on: [e.g., communicating with a supervisor, giving and receiving feedback, collaborating, following through, self-advocacy]

What is happening now: [what students struggle with, or what an employer partner has flagged]

WHAT I WANT

Design [a lesson / a series of activities / a reflection protocol / a student-facing tool] that helps students develop and document this skill.

GROUND RULES

1. Separate the underlying capacity from the style. Name what the skill actually accomplishes, then show at least three genuinely different ways a person could accomplish it, including ways that are not spoken, not spontaneous, and not extroverted.

2. Anchor everything in real contexts. No simulated classroom-only practice unless there is a clear reason for it. Students should be noticing and recording this skill where it actually shows up in their lives.

3. Build toward evidence, not ratings. Students should end with a record of what they did and what it made possible, in their own words, that they could use in an interview or a portfolio.

4. Treat the environment as a variable. Include at least one moment where students consider whether a breakdown belonged to them or to the setting they were in.

5. Make student choice structural, not decorative. Give real options in how they engage, how they demonstrate, and how they record.

6. Assume some students are disabled, multilingual, or communicate in ways the default rubric would penalize. Do not add a separate accommodations section. Design so it is not needed.

OUTPUT

The learning goal in one sentence, stated as a capacity rather than a behavior.

The activity, step by step, with what I say and what students do.

Three to five student-facing prompts or questions, written in language students would actually use.

A short way for students to log what happened, reusable over time.

Two or three things likely to go wrong, and what to do about each.

Before you write anything, ask me up to three questions about my context that would change your design. Then wait for my answers.