America Succeeds defines Communication as the ability to express ideas clearly and effectively across multiple formats and contexts, with sophisticated audience awareness and contextual appropriateness. This encompasses written, verbal, visual, and digital expression, requiring students to adapt their message based on who they’re communicating with and why.
Emma stood before STEM professionals, articulating her team’s solution to educational inequality through an innovative app design. Four years earlier, she had confessed: “I couldn’t present to save my life. I was too fidgety. I couldn’t, like, I was too nervous. I would stutter and stuff like that.”
Her transformation wasn’t miraculous—it was systematic. While many schools treat communication as occasional presentations in English class or annual science fairs, STEM School Chattanooga discovered that powerful communication develops through three interlocking practices: making skills explicit and visible, engaging students in authentic experiences, and integrating development throughout all learning. When these practices work in concert—rather than as isolated activities—they create a multiplier effect transforming hesitant freshmen into articulate professionals.
STEM School Chattanooga: Engineering Eloquence Through Deliberate Design
“Literally, day one of freshman year, they made us create a presentation about selling shoes, and we had to go up there and present it,” Emma recalls. This immediate immersion—contrasting with traditional approaches that might delay presentations until students feel “ready”—demonstrates how STEM School makes communication explicit through their engineering design process, which Emma notes is “plastered all over our school.”
Unlike typical rubrics hidden in syllabi or shared once before presentations, every classroom displays the same framework with communication expectations embedded at each phase: research requires clear documentation, ideation demands verbal brainstorming, prototyping needs visual explanation, testing involves data presentation. Students always know what good communication looks like, not just when grades arrive.
The school’s authentic experiences escalate deliberately across four years—a stark contrast to the common practice of students engaging in the same presentation format every year. At STEM Chattanooga, freshman year’s Day 1 shoe presentation is low-stakes but gets students engaged immediately in communicating off the cuff. Sophomore year students have to formally present to community members and business partners which ups the ante with students having to be on their game when presenting to others. Then junior year students take the lead on actual industry partner projects where good, ongoing communication can make the difference in the outcomes of a real project. Leading finally to senior year where students need to engage with an expert panel. Year by year, STEM Chattanooga educators slowly increase the complexity of the communication and in a variety of formats, all carefully supported through the constant guidance of the educators. As Madison put it, Mr. Carrasco would for weeks “just continue to come sit at our table and say, ‘Well, I think that this can be improved. You guys aren’t finished. There’s always room for improvement.'” This continued push to get better at presenting one’s self and communicating with others in a variety of contexts and formats taught Madison that professional communication requires attention to the audience, the goal of communication, and the variety of ways one can communicate – circumventing the typical one-and-done, stand-up and deliver presentations most common in conventional settings.
The real revolutionary shift lies in the integration and focus on communication across all learning, rather than relegating communication to English class or special presentation days. Often students are required to complete prototype reports which can include demanding written technical communication, as well as thorough verbal explanations, exhibitions, presentations to panels, and design rationale to their teachers. Senior year, all students are expected to participate in the annual Chattanooga Inventanooga, an annual student business pitch competition where students from across the region present inventions, innovative solutions, and business ideas aimed at solving real-world problems. In this case, seniors present their capstone projects to industry professionals. Unlike traditional assessments where communication might be a small portion of a rubric, regular self-assessments with STEM students instructors, presentations to business partners, and end engagement in community-embedded projects press students to get better and better in a variety of communication formats and mediums.
Emma’s transformation illustrates the compound effect unique to this deliberate approach. She evolved from someone who “was too fidgety… would stutter and stuff like that” to confidently speaking at the State of Education for the County, where she “went up in front of a bunch of these people from the district” and talked about her school. But perhaps more revealing is Madison’s reflection on her own growth: “I initially had to learn that I need to step back a little and make sure that I’m, you know, making sure people who possibly might not feel too comfortable to talk feel heard.” This isn’t just personal communication competence—it’s the development of meta-cognitive awareness about communication dynamics. Students like Madison haven’t just learned to present; they’ve internalized how communication works as a system. This transformation happens not by just hoping students will naturally improve, but through four years of explicit, scaffolded practice—from students’ Day 1 shoe presentations to their senior professional pitches at Inventanooga. The result? Students who don’t just communicate well, but understand why and how communication works.
Gibson Ek High School: Communication as Learning Tool
When Olivia arrived at Gibson Ek High School, perfectionism and anxiety made even simple conversations difficult. Four years later, she confidently presents veterinary research to professionals and advocates for herself with remarkable clarity, having interviewed more than a dozen veterinary students about their mental health and created resources now used by veterinary schools. This experience required her to navigate sensitive conversations, pivot strategies when obstacles arose, and present complex findings to university professors who suggested co-publishing her work. This transformation isn’t unique—it’s what happens when a school makes communication development the heart of learning itself.
Gibson Ek makes the focus on communication explicit through an innovative visual dashboard. Forget letter grades—students watch competency bars and trees grow as they master four distinct communication elements: Collaboration, Understanding, Expression, and Evaluation & Research. Unlike traditional report cards showing “B+ in English,” students track progress in each communication element using visual representations which reference back to evidence of their development through real world projects, internship experiences, and design labs. This system transforms progress from mysterious teacher judgments into concrete growth students own and discuss regularly with their advisors against evidence of their growth. In this way, the school doesn’t just hope communication develops—it architects systems ensuring it does.
How? Gibson Ek creates authentic experiences requiring good communication through personal learning projects, internships, and Design Labs (projects where small student teams use design thinking to solve real-world community challenges) where a variety of communication skills develop through genuine necessity. Every student pursues independent projects, internships (2 days a week), and design labs through the year where communication has real consequences.
Saya’s Empty Bowls Project raised $2,000 for the local food bank by leveraging savvy communication. When the school’s kiln was broken, she had to write grants and present to the school board, convincing them to fund a new one. She then coordinated with pottery studios across Seattle for bowl donations. Clara’s theater production necessitated her taking complete ownership of the project from script selection to final performance. “I was completely in charge of it. I wrote the grant to get the funding. I managed the crew, I managed the actors.” Working with limited rehearsal time, she had to navigate interpersonal conflicts, negotiate resources from local theaters, and coordinate complex logistics. Peter, because of his coding prowess, was engaged by a national trucking company to redesign its logistics platform. Passionate about coding, Peter reached out directly to the company and “mutually identified a project where he would code the interface for their data systems.” This required translating their business needs into technical specifications, presenting progress to non-technical stakeholders, and maintaining ongoing professional communication throughout the development of the new platform.
Finally, Lauren’s senior capstone exemplifies how authentic work develops sophisticated communication. Working with King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, she conducted 15 interviews regarding several sensitive topics: “I’ve been interviewing young people around the county on their experiences with sex education, sexual violence prevention lessons.” This single project required mastery of several communication elements—collaborating with prevention team members, finding and interrogating the research literature, expressing findings to diverse audiences, and evaluating source credibility while seeking expert feedback.
Such independent projects and community-embedded internships, which Gibson Ek students engage in all year round, provide sustained practice across communication subskills. These authentic work experiences develop communication capabilities impossible to simulate in classrooms.
Finally, these experiences deepen learning by making communication essential to the learning process rather than separate from it. Every personal project requires students to demonstrate communication, and the continual development of their learning plans reinforces its importance. Ongoing reflection and discussion with advisors, teachers, and community members further highlight the value and utility of strong communication skills.
Students’ portfolios demonstrate growth in each communication element, and the opportunity to present their learning and growth over time each quarter in community presentations of learning once again reinforces the need to be a good communicator and presses their ability to communicate well in a variety of formats.
When communication is woven into the fabric of school life, students’ reflection, understanding, and skills grow deeper. Olivia, once held back by perfectionism and anxiety, learned to confidently advocate for herself through sustained support. Personal Learning Plans become living documents where students track and shape their communication growth. Combined with dashboards and portfolios, these tools enable students to practice metacommunication—not just expressing themselves, but analyzing how they communicate and planning future growth. The result is students who understand not only how communication works, but how to keep developing it.
The Multiplier Effect: Why the Three-Part Practice Approach Transforms Communication
These schools reveal why communication flourishes when our three practices reinforce each other—and why traditional approaches that treat them separately achieve limited results:
Making communication explicit and visible gives students frameworks to understand quality. Conventional schools might have rubrics, but when they’re only shared before major assignments rather than displayed constantly, students lack ongoing awareness of expectations.
Engaging in authentic experiences creates pressure that motivates growth. Traditional schools might have presentations, but when the audience is always the same teacher who already knows the content, the stakes remain artificial.
Integrating throughout all learning provides constant reinforcement. Traditional schools might teach communication skills, but when practice is confined to English class or special presentation days, students don’t develop the versatility employers demand.
When combined, these practices multiply impact in ways isolated approaches cannot achieve. Emma’s story shows this multiplication: the engineering framework helped her understand what good communication looked like (not just receiving grades), authentic presentations to professionals motivated improvement (not just grade pressure), and constant integration meant daily practice (not occasional presentations). The result? A student who doesn’t just present well but understands communication as a tool for impact, consciously developing skills she can articulate and teach others.
Your Implementation Guide: Proven Strategies from Successful Schools
Getting Started:
Make Communication Visible:
- Post expectations and rubrics where students see them daily
- Create visual progress charts tracking communication growth
- Have students maintain portfolios documenting their communication journey
Create Authentic Experiences:
- Invite parents, community members, or younger students as audiences
- Partner with organizations needing student communication projects
- Have students teach mastered concepts to peers
Integrate Throughout Learning:
- Require multiple formats for projects—written, verbal, and visual
- Add reflection prompts about how students learned, not just what
- Embed communication practice into existing assignments across subjects
Build From What You Have:
- Add self-assessment rubrics to existing presentations
- Transform guest speaker visits into student presentation opportunities
- Convert parent conferences to student-led conferences
- Require peer explanations of completed work
- Enhance your strongest practice (science fairs, poetry slams, debates) by adding missing elements:
- Have criteria? Add authentic audiences
- Have audiences? Add explicit frameworks
- Have occasional experiences? Spread across all subjects
Transformation happens by aligning existing practices into a coherent system where visibility, authenticity, and integration multiply impact.
The Significance of Communication as a Foundation Skill:
Communication isn’t just the most requested skill by employers—it’s the gateway skill enabling all others. Students who can’t articulate their thinking can’t demonstrate their brilliance. Those who can’t adapt their message to different audiences can’t collaborate effectively or lead with influence. When schools systematically develop communication through these three practices, they don’t just prepare students to speak well. They develop young people who understand that their voices matter, their ideas have value, and they possess the power to shape their world. This conscious development of durable skills—rather than hoping they emerge naturally—prepares students not just for next year’s class but for careers that don’t yet exist.
Next week: Collaboration: How schools transform group work from frustration to synergy through systematic collaboration.
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