The communication, social and boundary setting skills Herriman High School senior Bree Leeper learned as a sophomore in her social skills class helped improve her relationship with her mom, her friends, her swimming students, herself and even her phone.

“It was the most beneficial-in-life class,” Leeper said. “I was like, ‘Oh, wait, I'll actually use this stuff, not like the Pythagorean theorem.’ It helped me communicate with my mom and show my point of view without hurting her feelings or, like, bulldozing her down. Because of the class, my mom said I have the best apologies in the whole family, because I learned not to ever say ‘you’ but always say ‘I’ in an apology.”

Leeper notices a difference in the communication and empathy skills of her friends who haven’t taken the social skills class.

“I noticed with my freshman friends, the communication with the coaches and things is totally different— there's not as much respect and everything like that, because they don't understand.” Leeper said. “I hear about other high schools—our high school seems genuinely pretty nice, like, everyone understands each other, kind of, and we're all willing to communicate, and I think are in that mind because of this class, because we've all learned these things. We aren’t biting each other's heads off. We all have respect for each other.”

Other high schools offer quarter-long career readiness or ACT prep classes in conjunction with drivers education classes, but Herriman High students take the social skills class.

Jen Glassy, the current class instructor, said the interactive lessons help the many students whose social skills are underdeveloped because of the social restrictions during covid.

“Covid changed education,” Glassy said. “Kids did not talk to each other like they used to. There was less socializing.”

The first time she taught the class a few years ago, Glassy was reluctant to hold an unstructured game day at the end of each week, as prescribed by the curriculum. During the first game day, she was shocked to see how just one week of class had improved the students’ social skills.

“It was so awesome to just see kids talking and laughing and having fun, and no one had a phone in their face, and no one was feeling awkward,” Glassy said.

HHS School Counselor Cindy Watkins, M.Ed, ACMHC, originally developed the social skills class in response to a rash of student suicides several years ago. She said the struggle all those students had in common was relationships, so she designed the class to be interactive and to encourage social connections.

Watkins said students begin the quarter awkward and quiet but by the end, they are laughing and talking with each other outside their normal friend groups.

“That's my favorite part, to watch that happen,” Watkins said. “These kids that are normally outliers are playing with the kids that seem like they've got it all together because they found out they share a lot of the same problems.”

The class curriculum covers how to identify toxic friends, how to break off a relationship in a healthy way, how to give compliments and how to have empathy. Students also learn about their own brain development to help them respond to peer pressure, strong emotions and their natural impulsivity and to understand social media’s impact on their developing brain.

Watkins said over the nine weeks of class, students grow as a person and as a member of society, becoming more confident, more generous to others and more prepared for future jobs and relationships.

“There's not anything that is ever taught in the class that a parent does not want their child to know,” Watkins said.

Students are encouraged to talk to their parents about what they learn in the class and many assignments challenge them to try out their new skills on their family members.

One homework assignment, called mic drop, requires students to give a sincere and specific compliment to someone and then just walk away. Later, they write about how that affected their relationship with that person.

“Those reflections are my favorite to read,” Watkins said. “Students thank me for that assignment.”