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SkillRise Spark

Skills plan

Make a skills plan

Pick a workplace and a skill and get a plan: workdays to try, small real-world practice steps, tools and further learning (free and paid options), and one next move. Start with a suggestion, or choose your own.

A few good places to start

Choose my own workplace and skill

Step 1 · Choose a workplace

Step 2 · Choose a skill

Your plan

Self-advocacy at Falls Health Clinic

Saying what you need, want, don't understand or won't do — and choosing how.

Add this focus to my Spark guide

Not the same as: Only complaining about unfair treatment. Asking for something to do is self-advocacy too.

Workdays to walk through

  1. Workday 01 · The Favor

    Monday · 8:52 AM

    Your cousin's husband wants to know if his wife came in last week, and why. He's not being cruel about it. He's just asking.

    Enter workday Read the lesson

  2. Workday 02 · A Slow Afternoon

    Tuesday · 1:15 PM

    Nothing urgent is happening, which is its own kind of trap. No-shows, a records request and a phone that won't stop, and every small decision is yours alone.

    Enter workday

Practice steps

Choose a step that fits your situation. Mark a step when you have tried it in a setting that fits your life — at work, in a class, while volunteering, caregiving, in your community or in a practice conversation. Nobody is grading this.

The same skill somewhere else

Manufacturing · Production line

Fenmore Line 4

Eleven Minutes

A sticking safety guard puts production pressure and your working conditions in tension.

Enter workday

Food processing · Grading and packing line

Harrow Plain Packhouse

The Truck at Eleven

Instructions to speed up grading conflict with the specification you were trained to follow.

Enter workday

Retail — home goods

Rise & Co. Homeware

The Return

An unusual return raises the question of when to ask a manager for guidance.

Enter workday