Giving Compass' Take:

• Businesses are reporting that they expect more from students when it comes to basic workplace skills such as communicating, thinking critically and being able to collaborate. 

• Some internship programs address this issue by teaching student interns soft skills for the office. How could educators develop a curriculum that incorporates teaching those specific skill sets? 

• Read about some programs that are teaching entrepreneurial skills in K-12. 

When Emma Campbell began planning how to spend her summer, one thing was clear: To drive to the stables to go riding and get to and from home and her gym, she’d need to buy a lot of gas for her car, and to do that — she’d need a job.

Luckily, the internship program, Prepare Rhode Island, was designed to anticipate the nervousness a student like Campbell might experience — as well as the inevitable host of faux pas, communication disconnects and other workplace etiquette snafus that can occur when teenagers enter professional work settings.

To help ward off such problems, the program featured an orientation and interview process to carefully match students with local businesses. Next, and perhaps most importantly, the 162 students who made the cut attended a five-day boot camp in which they learned crucial workplace skills such as goal setting, effective communication, teamwork, public speaking, conflict resolution and critical thinking.

As the labor market tightens, businesses are on the hunt, looking to fill jobs with young people coming out of schools and colleges. While there’s been a lot of talk about the demand for technical capabilities among this burgeoning pool of labor, employers complain that students lack fundamental skills: things like being able to collaborate, communicate, think critically and interact effectively with coworkers.

In response, some states have added requirements that schools teach these skills, sometimes referred to as “soft skills” or “employability skills.” States are adopting online curricula, or in some cases, developing their own programs from the ground up. But some education experts argue that too much of the burden for training people on the professional skills they need is falling on educators.

For this training to be truly effective, they say, schools also need help from local industries to provide rigorous real-life workplace learning experiences.

Read the full article about workplace skills by Sarah Gonser at The Hechinger Report