Student | Teen Program Outline

Communication Skills 101 is a high-school level class. The teacher, Mrs. Marley, starts early in the semester helping students:

• appreciate their own personality traits
• respect differences in classmates’ styles

This saves her valuable time later by avoiding misunderstandings and discipline problems that can arise from personality conflicts.

The student/teen version of the INSIGHT Inventory helps teenagers see each other’s positive characteristics, and respect Mrs. Marley’s personality traits and how these impact her teaching style. This gives her a way to design her lessons so they are interesting to teens with different communication preferences and appeal to their learning styles.

Mrs. Marley begins her semester by devoting two one-hour classes to communications improvement, using the following outline.

Class title:
Appreciating your Strengths and Respecting Each Other’s Personality Styles

Hour one

• The importance of communication and respect
• Learning about our personality styles
  (take and interpret the INSIGHT Inventory)
• How differences lead to misunderstandings

Hour two

• How your style may be different in class than it is at home
• What triggers stress and how do you react – is it working?
• How the teacher’s personality style affects the class atmosphere

Mrs. Marley finds that these sessions give the teens an opportunity to get to know each other better and avoid many misunderstandings and personality conflicts. They also learn what her personality characteristics are and how these relate to the way she conducts classes, deals with discipline issues, and reacts to stress. When students learn this early in the course, before small conflicts develop, it helps create a more positive class climate.