Tuesday: Dear Abby...

I have to admit, once I have finished reading the comics and scanning the classified ads for puppies I can't afford to buy yet, my last item I'll read in the newspaper is the Dear Abby section. Technically, I'm not sure Fort Wayne's Dear X is actually named Abby...

For anyone reading who does not know what the Dear X section is, it's a section in the newspaper where someone writes into a well-educated person and asks them for advice and words of encouragement for problems they are currently dealing with in their lives. Abby, or whatever their name is, writes back to the person and gives them a short answer to their question which usually ends with an encouraging message like, "Don't give up!" or something else along those lines.

Today in class I chose to focus on encouraging words as a soft skill. To execute this lesson I created 7 short letters which asked for advice about work which all of the trainees in the class struggle with. The topics I chose to focus on were:

• Feeling overwhelmed at a new job.
• Accepting a promotion.
• Being tired at work.
• Feeling emotional at work due to personal issues.
• Feeling unimportant at work.
• Making mistakes on the job.
• Dealing with performance reviews.

I tiered the lesson on two levels and then broke the work up between two levels in groups. The first lesson I created presented the problem to the reader, then it provided a section for the readers to write their answer to the reader. In this group we took turns reading and then discussing how to answer the person, once we decided on the answer we wrote the answer out. The second level also presented the problem but it gave the readers 3 possible answers: one answers was the correct answer to give, the second was an answer someone may give but it was not encouraging, and the third option was to write their own answer. In that group each member took turns reading again, and then the group discussed which answer was possibly the correct one.

The trainees all offered good answers to the questions, and several times they would hear the problem presented and then say, "I've had this problem before!" Interestingly the students who struggled with some of the problems mentioned could offer good answers to the questions. The struggle in this class is dealing with the problems when you are experiencing them personally. I know I personally can give fantastic relationship advice, but there have been a few times with ex-boyfriend where it was a lot harder to swallow my own advice. The activity was great though because when the trainees got stuck we as a group were able to talk through the possible answers and decide which answers were best.