Real Life / Real P’s & Q’s

CLASS 1 — LEARN IT

Monday • Millie Lewis Columbia

In our first class, we begin with social situations girls encounter every day. Students work on eye contact, introductions, conversation and listening skills, knowing when to speak and when to listen, phone etiquette, and becoming more aware of what their words, actions, and behavior communicate to others.

We also begin preparing for Thursday’s dining experience. Students learn what to expect from the time they enter a restaurant through the end of a meal. We practice approaching and sitting appropriately at the table, understanding a place setting, handling and using utensils properly, cutting food correctly, and pacing themselves during a meal.

Just as important, we talk about the social side of sharing a meal—how to take part in conversation, listen while someone else is talking, finish chewing before speaking, and remember that sharing a meal means paying attention to the people at the table, not just the food in front of you.

Throughout the class, we help students connect what they’re learning with why it’s important.

Looking at someone while they’re speaking lets that person know they have your attention. Listening without interrupting shows respect. Putting away a phone tells the person in front of you, “I’m present. I’m listening.”

Small actions can communicate powerful messages.

Class 1 gives students the instruction and hands-on preparation they need before we take what they’ve learned into a real restaurant on Thursday.

CLASS 2 — PRACTICE IT

Thursday • Dining Experience at Melrose Market

Thursday takes what students learned on Monday and puts it into practice over a meal in a real restaurant.

Now the situations we’ve discussed begin happening naturally. Students order for themselves, interact with restaurant staff, use their utensils, manage the pace of the meal, take part in conversation, listen when someone else is speaking, and practice being present and aware of the people around them.

It’s one thing to talk about social and dining etiquette in a classroom. It’s quite another when the menu is in your hands, the food arrives, conversation is happening, and you have an opportunity to use what you’ve learned.

The restaurant also gives us opportunities we can’t create ahead of time. Questions and unexpected situations come up, and we can coach as they happen.

This is where instruction becomes experience.

CLASS 3 — OWN IT

The Following Monday • Millie Lewis Columbia

The following Monday, we come back together after students have had several days to return to school, home, meals, conversations, friends, family, and all the ordinary situations where these lessons show up. Now we have something especially valuable to work with—their own experience.

We talk about what they noticed. What did they remember without someone reminding them? Did they catch themselves making a different choice? What is beginning to feel more natural? What still takes a little more thought and practice?

We review anything that still needs attention, and then Own It turns the focus more fully toward the girl herself.

We work on posture, body language, eye contact, and the way she enters and moves through a room. Through walking and simple runway exercises, students can see and feel what happens when they lift their eyes, adjust their posture, change their pace, or become more aware of how they are carrying themselves.

This gives us a practical way to work on confidence—not simply by telling a girl to be confident, but by giving her something she can actually do and practice.

From there, we talk about the choices girls are beginning to make for themselves. We want them to recognize that those everyday choices are also helping shape the person they are becoming.

We make the idea of character simple and practical:

Character is who you are becoming through the choices you make.

Choices we repeat can become patterns. Patterns can become habits. And our habits influence the way we naturally respond to the people and situations around us.

That doesn’t mean one poor choice defines a girl. Every new situation gives her another opportunity to choose differently.

We also talk about something girls at this age are already beginning to recognize: what gets attention.

Sometimes the quickest way to get a laugh or a reaction isn’t the choice we feel best about later. We certainly aren’t asking girls to stop being funny, energetic, outgoing, spontaneous, quiet, creative—or themselves.

In fact, part of Own It is helping a girl become more aware of what is already there—her strengths, her gifts, her individuality, and the qualities she is still discovering in herself. She doesn’t have to become someone else to fit in.

And she never needs to give up something valuable about herself simply to get someone else’s attention.

Never trade respect for attention.

This is what Own It is about—moving from “I know what I was told to do” to “I understand why, and I’m beginning to choose it for myself.”