Wahluke Junior High students learning soft skills through feedback, competition

MATTAWA — On Thursday afternoon, Jan. 17, Alex Hyndman and Madison Harlow sat behind the anchor desk of Tri-Cities NBC affiliate KNDU, faced studio cameras and reported on city plans to build a new bridge in Richland. It was all in a day’s work for a professional anchor.

Except Hyndman and Harlow weren’t professional reporters, hosts or TV personalities. They were just two of the 20 teenagers from Wahluke Junior High participating in the last event of the Amazing Warrior Shake finals, and two of the 10 students who won a chance to go to a national competition in Atlanta, Ga. in mid-February.

Whether it’s because opportunities for civic engagement have contracted in recent decades or simply an unfortunate perception of “kids these days,” Wahluke Junior High principal Andrew Harlow recognized three years ago that to prepare his students for the workforce, they needed to learn more than how a bill becomes a law or how to find the hypotenuse of a triangle: they need to learn how to shake an employer’s hand, speak in public and handle tense situations with customers.

These “soft skills” may seem simple, but in reality they are highly desired skills in employees that schools are not always equipped to teach, said Harlow. Three years ago, however, the school found a solution in the Amazing Warrior Shake, both a tiered competition in soft skills and an opportunity to engage every last junior high student in a constructive lesson in how to engage with employers, customers and the public.

The project started small, when students passed through stations made of butcher paper and duct tape to practice shaking the hands of prospective employers, or pitch sale ideas, or handle theoretical customer service issues. In the beginning, Harlow said, there were concerns that students might not engage with the event.

Since its start three years ago, however, the Amazing Warrior Shake has expanded dramatically, along with its student engagement. The school year began with every single student from the junior high, and a number from the elementary school, participating in a competition that included step-by-step feedback from the school’s Parent Teacher Organization.

These soft skill lessons were included in the basic schedule at the junior high, with time allotted at the end of school days for “Warrior Time,” simple and quick lessons in the skills that would be built up in preparation for the end-of-year competition. Though not every student would later take part in the competition stages of the Amazing Warrior Shake, they each got a chance to learn soft skills vital to success in both learning and employment.

Later in the year those skills got put to the test. First the top 150 kids from the school, then the top 25, and finally the top 20, competed in a series of varied events ranging from poetry recitals in the middle of a public mall to learning to defuse a customer service snafu when a theoretical customer finds a hair in their sandwich.

One event saw teams of students taken to a Richland Walmart, each given $25, and told to find a way to donate the money in a way that made the biggest impact. One group took a homeless man shopping for groceries and another, after attempting to take an officer to lunch, was informed of another homeless man living with his 3-year-old son that could use a trip to the grocery store as well.

In another event, management at the Richland Ranch & Home were so impressed with the students doing mock interviews that every kid and teacher walked away with an unexpected $10 gift card and a silver dollar. This was all the more impressive a result, Harlow said, given the fact that Ranch & Home had only volunteered to take part in the event at the last minute when another business had to cancel.

Each challenge was unique, and often emphasized improvisation, with students only being informed of the task ahead minutes before they needed to perform. All the while, event organizers from Wahluke Junior High found experts from these varied fields, from customer service workers to business owners to news anchors and more, to bring feedback after every event.

This combination of improvisation and feedback was important, Harlow said, making students both think on their feet but also learn from their mistakes. Students initially recited poetry in front of members of their school and were given feedback, unaware that they would be asked to recite the poem again in the middle of the Columbia Center Mall. Though they were surprised by the tasks in front of them — much like the average employee in any given job — they were able to take specific feedback and use it to improve their performance, Harlow said.

“You get the judges asking, ‘oh, they’re so cute, do we have to score them?’ But we have to give them feedback,” Harlow said.

Ten students — Abel Castaneda, Alma Vasquez, Richie Torres, Daisy Barajas, Diego Olivares, Jenny Saavedra, Jason Pacheco, Madison Harlow, Josue Mendoza and Alex Hyndman — will attend the national competition, which last year drew hundreds of students, representing Mattawa in Atlanta next month.