In our recent blog, Beyond Grades: Understanding the Skills Behind Student Success, we explored how the Center for High School Success (CHSS) Skills Wheel helps schools identify and support the skills students need to thrive in ninth grade and beyond.
To dive deeper, we spoke with our colleague, Jen Gallegos, Southwest Director at CHSS, about why skill development matters, what schools are seeing during the transition to high school, and how educators can use existing structures to better support students.
Read on for our full conversation.
1. What is the CHSS Skills Wheel?
The CHSS Skills Wheel is a tool that helps schools focus on the skills students need to be successful, not just in high school, but beyond graduation. It gives educators a shared language to talk about skills like self-management, self-awareness, relationship building, decision-making, and perseverance. What I love about the Skills Wheel is that it helps us move beyond simply identifying that a student is struggling and start asking why. Instead of stopping at “this student is off track,” teams can identify a skill the student may need help developing and be much more intentional about the support they provide. It also helps shift our thinking away from labeling students. Rather than saying a student is “unmotivated” or “disorganized,” we can recognize that these are skills that can be explicitly taught, practiced, and strengthened over time.
2. Why focus on skills, not just grades and attendance?
Grades and attendance help us see what is happening. Skills help us understand why it might be happening and what we can do about it. If a student is failing classes, for example, the issue may not be academic ability. They may be struggling with organization, time management, task initiation, self-advocacy, or responsibilities outside of school. Similarly, when attendance starts to decline, there is often more happening in a student’s life that we need to understand. The goal isn’t to replace grades and attendance. Those are incredibly important indicators. Focusing on skills gives schools another layer of information that can help them understand what students need and respond more intentionally.
3. What skills do students struggle with most during the transition to high school?
One of the biggest shifts students experience when they enter high school is the increased expectation of independence. Suddenly, they’re managing multiple teachers, larger workloads, extracurricular commitments, changing social environments, and much more responsibility for their own learning. In my experience working with schools, some of the skills that come up most often are organization, time management, task initiation, and self-advocacy. Many ninth graders are still learning how to ask for help, communicate with teachers, manage competing priorities, and advocate for what they need. They’re also developing confidence, navigating new relationships, and figuring out where they belong. The good news is that these aren’t fixed traits. They’re skills that can be taught, practiced, and strengthened, and schools can play an important role in helping students develop them.
4. How can schools identify when students need support?
The most effective schools I work with combine data with relationships. Attendance, grades, behavior, and course performance can help us identify students who may need additional support. But some of the most important information comes from talking with students and the adults who know them well. This is where strong 9th Grade Success Teams and Kid Talks can be incredibly powerful. When teams regularly come together to look at data and talk about individual students, they can bring together perspectives from multiple adults who know that student in different ways. Instead of simply identifying that a student is off track, the conversation can focus on what the team knows about the student, what they may be experiencing, what skills may need strengthening, and what support could make a difference. I often encourage schools to shift from asking, “What’s wrong with this student?” to asking, “What is this student experiencing?” That shift changes the conversation. It creates curiosity instead of assumptions and helps us understand what might actually be getting in the student’s way. Student voice is also critical. Students should have opportunities to reflect on what is working, where they’re struggling, and what skills they want or need to strengthen. When we combine that perspective with data and strong relationships, we have a much more complete picture of what a student needs.
5. What does this work look like in practice?
One of the things I appreciate about this work is that it doesn’t have to become another program or initiative for schools to implement. It can be embedded into structures they already have. I’ve seen schools incorporate skill development into advisory, student support meetings, mentoring, grade-level team meetings, and one-on-one conversations with students. Teams can use their data to identify a student who may need support, talk with the student to better understand what’s happening, identify a skill to focus on, and then help the student set goals, practice, and reflect on their progress. The schools that do this well make skill development part of the culture. Students hear consistent language from different adults, and teachers, counselors, administrators, and support staff have a shared way to talk about what students need.
6. How can schools get started focusing on these skills?
My biggest advice is to start small and be intentional. Schools don’t need to tackle every skill at once or create an entirely new initiative. Start by helping staff understand why these skills matter and how they connect to the outcomes they’re already focused on. Then look at your students and identify a few skills that seem especially important in your context. I also encourage schools to use the structures they already have. Advisory, ninth-grade teams, student support processes, mentoring, and data meetings can all become opportunities to intentionally build skills. Most importantly, remember that skill development takes time. We wouldn’t expect a student to master an academic concept after one lesson, and we shouldn’t expect that with these skills either. Students need opportunities to practice, receive feedback, reflect, and try again. Ultimately, we’re helping students develop skills that will serve them far beyond ninth grade. That’s what makes this work so powerful.
