Non-Academic Skills: Can We Teach Those?

Originally posted on Monday, October 29, 2012

This was originally written as Hurricane Sandy approached the East Coast, her sights set on a point a couple hundred miles north but determined to give the Washington, DC area a wind-lashed deluge over the next few hours and interrupt my typing with power outages. The original post was lost; I was only able to retrieve the opening paragraphs, but I have more to add, so it’s due to be updated anyway.

With this in mind, my younger child decided to use the windy afternoon before the storm arrived to be outside and to burn off calories and to just....be. She'd been working on jumping rope recently. As recently as 4-5 weeks before, she was jumping awkwardly and managing perhaps 3 or 4 jumps before the rope caught on her legs. She would try again, over and over, before giving up in tearful frustration - and then, a minute or 2 later, with the tears not yet dry on her face, she was at it again, raging at the rope and at her inexperience as it happened again and again. And then, something very interesting happened.