Family: Eight essential life skills that schools can teach our kids

I learned at an early age from my mother that there was more to school than reading, writing, arithmetic and lunch. She was a teacher. I was an eager student of the academic sort. That didn't impress her. She told me later it was clear I was ready to read when I was 4, but she refused to teach me because I needed more work on my social skills.

She will turn 93 at the end of this month. I am tempted to call and ask her to evaluate how I turned out, but I fear the answer. My life has been a lot of reading and writing, with some arithmetic. Even as a parent I rarely considered how well my children's schools were teaching life skills that went beyond what is assessed under No Child Left Behind.

The habits of the heart are probably learned almost as much at school as at home. But which ones can we reasonably expect teachers to address? What should we look for to make certain these immeasurable but invaluable traits are being reinforced?

With help from Local Living Editor Liz Seymour, whose children are just starting school, I came up with eight essential life skills. I sought expert opinion on their importance and how to teach them. If you have your own suggestions, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle and post a comment.

Here are mine, in no particular order:

1 Organization

Linda Allen, a star math teacher in Arlington, said helping students absorb a sense of structure is key to her middle school's success. "A good teacher, regardless of the content area, has today's main idea and homework in the same area of the room every day. That teacher reminds students every day to copy the information down at the start of the class, and gives them time to do that." She gives parents timely feedback about work completion "so that intervention can happen sooner rather than later."

A related lesson is deferring gratification. Psychologists Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E.P. Seligman, by seeing what happens when children have the choice of a dollar today or two dollars next week, have concluded that self-discipline and self-denial are keys to success. Katherine Bradley, president of the Washington-based CityBridge Foundation, says it "means sticking with something even if it's boring, pushing yourself to finish even if it's a long assignment."

2 Music

Kenneth J. Bernstein, a much-admired social studies teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George's County, is also a piano player. "I do not think every child needs to learn to sing or play an instrument," he said, "but each may need to learn how to listen, because different kinds of music may require different kinds of listening. In a sense, being exposed to several kinds of music is like learning a second language: It begins to empower one to learn further on one's own, because one has gone beyond the limitations of what one grows up with."

Allen said students should also learn how to be a good audience. "If a child can hold it together in the company of hundreds of their peers, they can hold it together for any event," she said.

3 Teamwork