Local Brownie Troop Gets Lesson in Social Skills

The leaders of a Fort Lee Brownie troop hosted an expert on teaching social skills, manners and etiquette to children and young adults Friday to prepare the girls for a formal tea they have coming up in early December.

Co-Leaders of Brownie Troop 1017 in Fort Lee, Paige Soltano and Rachel Schulman, invited Faye Rogaski of "socialsklz:-) tools to thrive in the modern world" to their meeting at , where the Brownies learned everything from body language and eye contact, to shaking hands properly and making a good first impression, to table settings and how to dine properly while maintaining a polite conversation.

Rogaski taught the 13 Brownies present for the meeting—there are 15 in the troop—the various components of a good handshake: use your right hand, for example; use a web-to-web, firm grip—“no dead fish handshakes,” as she put it—smile; and keep your left hand at your side.

She also taught the girls that eye contact is essential when shaking hands and saying hello, and had them enter the classroom one-by-one to practice.

“Thanks for having me,” the girls said as Rogaski put them through the paces, asking those who didn’t do it right the first time to go to the back of the line and try again.

In preparation for their upcoming tea, Rogaski also went through how a table is set and the proper etiquette for sitting at the table, drawing a diagram as she explained each piece and where it goes: the bread plate, the meal plate, the water glass, forks, knives and napkins.

“The whole purpose of a dinner or tea is to socialize,” Rogaski told the girls. “So the napkin gets unfolded under the table.”

Other tips Rogaski imparted included having your legs in front of you, uncrossed, with your feet flat on the ground (if they reach) when seated at a table; not sitting to far from the table so things don’t fall into your lap; properly excusing yourself when you have to use the facilities and putting your napkin on the chair when you temporarily leave the table; patting your mouth with your napkin as opposed to wiping it; whispering to a friend who has food on his or her mouth; never answering a question when you have food in your mouth, but rather raise your index finger and finish chewing and swallow before talking; and not using your fingers to eat anything except for bread, finger sandwiches or cookies.

“But ladies,” Rogaski said, “there’s a polite way to eat with your fingers.”

“Keep your plate neat because what you’re doing at a tea is you’re having a polite conversation,” she added. “The whole idea is that you’re talking to people.”

She also told the girls that their “job” at a tea party is to engage the people sitting around them in conversation.

“It’s so important not to leave people out,” Rogaski said. “Don’t just have a conversation with the person sitting next to you. You’ve got to include everybody.”

When you’re done eating, she told the Brownies, put your utensils at the “4 o’clock” position on your plate and place your napkin back where it started.

“That shows that you’re done,” Rogaski said, concluding her own presentation by having the Brownies thank her for coming—with proper eye contact and firm handshake, of course.

Rogaski started socialsklz:-) about two years ago, she told Patch. Prior to that, she had a public relations business, provided media training for clients and taught undergraduate classes at New York University and graduate students at Fordham how to build brands and put together PR plans for corporations.

“I just saw that year after year my students’ social skills were sort of falling off, and I was noticing a much more casual interaction with me within the classroom,” Rogaski said.

She started a class called “The Brand Called You,” covering everything from first impression, body language, eye contact and shaking hands, to interview skills, “basically the media training skills that I use with clients,” she said.

“When I did media training, I thought, everybody could use this,” Rogaski added. “The only people in your life that really talk to you about your social skills are your mom, your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, and it comes across a little differently; it’s almost attacking or argumentative. But hearing it from someone else and putting it into kind of a media training-type environment is a wonderful way to learn. Plus, most people have never really learned how to properly shake hands or introduce themselves. So I it started there, and I just realized as I was teaching, this should start so much younger in life.”

And so it was that socialsklz:-) was born.

When Rogaski modified the class and started volunteering it in New York City public schools, it became popular enough for her to make it a business, though, she says she never “really meant for it to turn into a business.”

“There was a demand for it,” she said. “I had parents asking me if they can take more than just this class here at this school.”

So Rogaski started a weekend workshop out of her conference room at Union Square before she even had a name for the business.

socialsklz:-) now offers weekend workshops in Brooklyn, the Upper East Side, the Upper West and TriBeCa, as well as an afterschool program. Rogaski said she also does a lot of private instruction in New York, where she works with “a lot of Brownie troops,” in addition to continuing her work at the university level.

“The program starts at four years old, but this is such a great age group to work with—eight—because they get it, and they get what it means to make a good first impression,” Rogaski said of working with the Fort Lee Brownies. “I don’t couch this as a manners class. Yes, there are a lot of people looking for manners and etiquette classes, and we cover that type of material, but you say ‘manners’ to kids, and they just turn off.”

Instead she prefers to call what she does teaching “social skills” because it “resonates with kids this way.”

“You assume your child is going to just pick these skills up in society, but it’s difficult,” Rogaski said. “The whole premise of this program is to put them in a really fun workshop, teach them, practice them and then really give them the tools to go out in the world and be successful.”

Rogaski, who’s appeared on the Today Show numerous times, in addition to many other local and national programs, says she hopes to expand her program offerings, which are currently only available in New York, to New Jersey in the near future, possibly within the next year.