Igniting student curiosity through career exploration

Key points:

During my 25 years in the classroom, I have seen educators successfully overcome a variety of challenges to help their students learn. However, student engagement remains a challenge for many.

In speaking with colleagues across the country, everyone seems to agree that sparking student engagement and curiosity has become incredibly difficult since the COVID-19 pandemic. I think a possible solution to sparking students' inherent curiosity is to show them how what they are learning in school connects to the real world through career exploration.

There are many benefits to exposing K-12 students to their potential career paths. It can help them set goals, motivate them to learn, help them explore who they are and discover what they like to do. From my experience, and from what I have learned from my fellow educators, the fundamental benefit of sharing possible career paths with students is that it sparks their curiosity about their future and prompts them to participate in lessons to learn more, whether about potential fields . They may be interested in the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed in a career.

I saw this phenomenon firsthand when, in my past life as an art and media teacher, I regularly approached professionals to talk to my students about the hows and whys behind their career paths. During those sessions, my students became excited and interacted with the guest in an effort to learn more about where they could apply their school learnings and lessons to a future career.

In my current role as a technology Integration Specialist, I now provide the educators I serve with a variety of resources to help them connect classroom instruction to their students' futures. These are the two main resources I recommend.

1. Career Field Exploration Tool
Students can explore high-paying career fields and learn specialized skills alongside their regular curriculum with this exploration tool from Stride. There are over 30 career paths in a variety of fields, including IT, healthcare, business management, and more. With pathways, students have the opportunity to earn real college credit, make professional connections through internships, and even practice for industry-required exams.

These pre-designed pathways give students the opportunity to glimpse a career or go deeper as they discover what they themselves would need to succeed in that industry. They can discover salary ranges, educational requirements, real-life job applications, and much more.

2. Professional connection platform
Discovery Education's Career Connect is the one-stop shop to facilitate, plan, and organize interactions between professionals and students. Career Connect is an online tool that helps educators find professionals for virtual classroom meetings to share their career path and occupational knowledge. The program is well designed with information about the companies and job roles of professionals, what connection they have with different disciplines, planning resources on the platform, and activities for educators to prepare their students for the exchange.

Educators can request an individual from the database or request a time and day and wait to see which professionals respond. Additionally, students can meet people from industries or careers they may not have previously considered, such as biotechnology, science, finance, computer engineering, human resources, education, and more.

To be honest, I know it can be scary or overwhelming for teachers to hire these industry professionals to make professional connections. I always advise educators in my district to embrace and be open to teachable moments, because every interaction can offer unexpected things. Watching teachers learn makes it even easier for students to highlight and connect their own learning.

It has been fantastic to connect students and teachers with professionals who are willing to share about their education, career path, advice, and the reality of working in the real world with students. These resources add immense value to classroom instruction for both educators and students and have quickly become favorites for meaningful learning.