As the parent we know our child best…
How do we equip our child/student to become more self-aware? Most high school teens have no desire to have mom or dad prodding them with questions that require answers beyond “fine” or “nothing”. But the prodding is the gentle push to help your child understand who they are at a deeper level.
When I look at my children, I see their gifts, talents, likes and dislikes, and strengths and weaknesses. We call our oldest our “Loophole Lawyer” (he catches us on EVERYTHING to debate, big parental groan here), has fierce determination and will not take no for an answer….ever, and finds every excuse or negotiation point to justify his cause.
Without proper guiding this “loophole lawyer” strength could become a weakness and vice versa on many strengths and weaknesses. Our goal is to guide him on how to best assert his not-taking-no-for-an-answer mentality to best equip him for his journey through life. I’m sure you can attest the same to your child’s abilities.
So how do we help our older students develop self-awareness?
Part of our mission here at Chalkboard Financial to to empower students and parents with the proper tools. These tools help to bridge the gap of who they are onto paper and then into ace-ing the interview.
I look to schools to educate my child on reading, how to write, conquer science theories, coaches to help my child become a better baseball player, a music instructor to guide along beats and staffs, and our “village” to help them adapt to social and peer changes and challenges. I hope you consider us a part of your village in all things student financial and career development.
Chalkboard Financial has pulled on years of experience from teachers, board members, and invested professionals to create thought provoking curricula and guides for your child and students alike. As a result, exercises like these help develop a student’s self awareness and more!
Read other Student $ Conversation Starters here.
To help you guide your student’s self-awareness journey, we’ve linked our Self-Awareness Building Exercise here. This activity isn’t meant to be done overnight or in one conversation. (Hint: Do Identifying Weaknesses last.) Students often need much more positive reinforcement on identifying and understanding insecurities and weaknesses. They also need to take time to learn how to spin the weaknesses to a strength. Again, this will help them be a better interview. We’ve ALL been asked that question at one time or another in an interview.
Getting Started with developing student self-awareness:
There are seven areas in our building exercise for a student to do a deep dive into who they are. This will allow for a more niched approach to help them narrow down jobs they might be unsuccessfully applying to or a college major that isn’t the best fit which could turn into a costly misstep. (Not one you want to mess up on, or pay for!) Or maybe it will solidify an awesome choice! Your on the right track! Keep up the great work and investment!
Focus on one area at a time and allow your student to navigate his or her thoughts. As always, this is meant to help your child grow, not put them in a box.
Questions like, “How does you overcome challenges?” Have they assessed their work values? What’s important to them?
Often students don’t know where to assess teamwork, beyond the fact that they’ve had to do it at one time or another through high school.
Here’s an example to help guide your teen on creating self-awareness :
When put in small teams to work, a student has strong leadership qualities to encourage engagement from everyone, including thoughts and ideas, guide a discussion to best desired outcome, and deliver a strong product or presentation to a professor or manager.
- Do you like to lead?
- Are you an effective leader?
- Can you include everyone in the conversation or do you tend to dominate?
- Are you open to others ideas and suggestions?
- Would you rather be told what to do?
- Can you facilitate a group conversation to get an outcome?
- Upon the group agreeing to a best next option, product or presentation, how are roles given to each person?
- If you are the leader, are you responsible for your entire team? Do you consider working along side each individual or would you rather lead from ahead? Lead from behind?
What does developing student self-awareness do?
Self-awareness not only translates to a student knowing themselves better, but also equips them to translate strengths to a resume. Spring-boarding off the resume, empowers them to be a better interviewer and land that awesome job!
Here at Chalkboard Financial, we talk about self-awareness, because like money, once understood and practically applied, a more confident and independent person flourishes. As a result, our children are happy, healthy, independent, smart people who enjoy life to the fullest!
The self-awareness challenge in our resource library is just one of our tried and true resources that you or your student can use to help them transition to life beyond school.
Check out this and many other free resources for your teen on our Resource Library here!
We’ll soon be writing about how we transport this self-awareness dive into expert interviewing soon! Stay tuned and if you love what you’re reading, please share!
