By Heather Wolpert-Gawron

"Why do we have to do this?" Many teachers have been hearing this question more frequently in recent years. Students detect a deepening divide between "real life" and "school life," and they have a point. As teachers, we should commit ourselves to linking instruction directly to the skills students will need in higher education and the workplace.

As I wrote my recent book, Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers, I researched skills that stakeholders in higher education and business claim they need to see in their future candidates. As a result, I developed a list of 13 skills that today's students should master. The book shares strategies for helping students develop these skills.

Not long ago, I chiseled the list down to a manageable "top five" by asking fellow teachers which skills they believed were most important. Here are the skills teachers identified—along with a couple of strategies for addressing each:

Collaboration

• First, don't assume that students know how to build consensus. It's something many adults don't even know how to do. Guide students through pitching their ideas to the group one at a time. Give them language to use when they don’t agree with one another. Model for them how to praise and critique. Then model the hardest thing of all: moving on.

• Shift your classroom environment to disturb the hierarchy that students tend to develop. Students will need to be able to work with diverse colleagues in the future. In middle school, that can be a challenge—in any one small group, a student's best friend, greatest enemy, first love, most recent love, and future love may be gathered together. Stirring the pot can help: Change seat assignments and/or table groupings often. Surprise kids by rotating who sits at the head of a group of desks shoved together. Spring it on them that it's time to look at the room from a different vantage, and you'll find that their internal perspective can change too.