There is much debate about what constitutes career readiness for modern-day students. Some are adamant that they need to possess strong STEM skills. Others are steadfast in their belief that soft skills are what will get today’s generation further. Still others remain committed to ensuring students develop the perfect balance of both. While it’s tough to determine how much of each should be in this balance, it seems pretty clear that a combination of STEM skills and soft skills will vastly benefit today’s students once they enter the workforce. Even though many of tomorrow’s careers have not yet been invented or evolved yet, we have a pretty good idea of how to prepare kids to excel at them. And, for many, this career preparation begins early on in their educational endeavors.
Too Many Kids Don’t Feel Prepared for Future Careers
McGraw Hill recently conducted a survey of students and the results were pretty startling. After the conclusion of the survey, it was revealed that 41 percent of students said they felt very prepared for their future careers—a number that’s far off from where it should be. The good news, if you choose to look at it that way, however, is that the number is up from just 29 percent in 2017. The survey included students from all over the country, from different types of colleges, and different lengths of programs (two- and four-year schools). Not only are college students feeling inadequately prepared for life after graduation, the survey revealed that many incoming college freshmen also do not feel prepared for the adjustments they are going to need to make. These include balancing a social life, course load, and faculty interactions on their own. While it’s not part of most high school curricula, preparing students for what their futures are going to be like, perhaps, is something that more time should be spent on.
Once they have a significant amount of college classes under their belts, however, the promise of preparedness isn’t exactly increased. According to the survey, just 50 percent of men said they felt very prepared for their future career. That number is pretty low. Compared to women surveyed, however, it looks amazing since just 36 percent of women said they would feel prepared for their future career. Obviously, this is alarming as well and something that high schools and colleges need to look long and hard at in order to both close this gap and increase the readiness of all students. Further, of the most important 21st century skills, only 43 percent of students surveyed said they were confident in their problem-solving skills, 37 percent said they were confident in resume writing, 34 percent said they were confident in interviewing, and 31 percent said they were confident in job searching. If you ask us, these are the important skills—not recording measurements or differentiating nouns and verbs.
If you’re looking for signs of encouragement, one thing that should be noted is that at least students are becoming more aware of the fact that they do not possess the skills they should. Whether it’s the skills they need in college, directly after graduating, or once they land a job in their field, this survey shows that there is a true lack of confidence. Even as they enter the interviewing process and get more comfortable with what is expected from them in the real world, the report indicates that this is not exactly a two-way street. There is a section of the report that states that 77 percent of graduates felt confident about their professionalism and work ethic while just 43 percent of employers felt the same way. It’s time to do more to ensure that students are developing into the assets that the real world desires—not remain assets that nicely fill up the score sheets of standardized tests.
Why College and Career Readiness Begins in Preschool
In today’s educational landscape, it is extremely common for teachers, parents, and school leaders to start saturating children with STEM experiences early on in their lives. This typically means exposing them to some elements of hands-on, tech-enabled learning that often starts as early on as first grade, kindergarten, and sometimes even preschool. Typically, this kind of early STEM exposure consists of giving students the opportunity to work with simple technologies that allow them to start experiencing the basics of concepts like coding, for example. There are plenty of Early Ed coding technologies, like the Cubetto Robot or Bee-Bot to name a couple, that illustrate to young children what coding is like on a very simplified scale. Of course, it’s logical to assume that this is the first step to helping these kids develop some specific STEM skills and, while this is certainly beneficial to their overall development, basic coding isn’t the only thing they can now be taught at a young age. Career readiness—believe it or not—is also trickling into these early grades and more and more teachers are becoming okay with it.
With so much happening in the way of education reform, the conversation about career readiness is happening sooner and sooner in many school districts. Even in the early grades, teachers can instill values and skills here and there that will help their students develop some of tomorrow’s most important qualities. By introducing students to hands-on and project-based learning from the get go, educators are doing their part to more effectively prepare them for any number of potential careers they could face later on in life. When asked what they want to be when they grow up, most young children respond with a doctor, teacher, or maybe a police officer. They have no idea, however, what it takes to achieve those dreams. Teachers, on the other hand, can open their students minds to new career possibilities—those that are more specific, like engineers, architects, or scientists as they help them build the skills to succeed in one of these 21st century fields.
Starting the career readiness conversation early allows students to look into a wealth of different career possibilities by the time they are ready to apply for college. By taking part in larger scale projects throughout the school year, students can begin mastering career skills, like problem solving and collaboration. Hands-on projects tend to help bring careers alive for students, who are able to apply their classroom knowledge in a real-world setting. They tend to change their mindsets to think more like engineers, designers, and even doctors—something that is both intentional and beneficial to them. Then, as students get older, they can participate in other kinds of learning and focus on gaining knowledge on things like career investment and leadership. It’s a different world now than it once was and career readiness is not something that should be overlooked. Since it can be focused on starting in the early grades, there’s no reason it should be left behind, either.
Career Readiness in Every Subject
If you’ve followed our work for the last few years, we routinely say that elements of STEM learning can be woven—however subtly—into just about any subject. Well, it turns out that the same goes for future career preparation. The fact is that, for today’s students, STEM and STEAM careers are more than likely going to be in their future. Many districts are now actively working career-focused learning into the classroom experiences of their students with a good deal of them focusing on highlighting entrepreneurship to better prepare students for future careers. The goal of programs like these is to provide students with authentic job experience through job shadowing, apprenticeships, internships, or even part-time employment. It is with this actual, hands-on experience that students will be more apt to develop the very skills that they will need in their future careers.
Once students enter high school, there should be more of a focus on developing career-ready skills—and not just for students in vocational programs. High school is a time for students to figure out what they like, what they’re good at, and whether or not this could translate into a successful career. When they figure out what it is that interests them, they can also start meeting with their counselors and doing some research to see if that path will still be viable in four or five years. As we know, jobs are constantly evolving and new roles are being created. As students begin to form an idea of what it is they want to pursue, teachers can differentiate their instruction based on what their students need to know. Carrying the career conversation into the classroom from the counselor’s office is something that needs to be done more. Students should be given the opportunity to work on the skills they will need for their personal future plans in elective classes as well as during general education requirements, which will hopefully lead to more well-rounded and career-ready individuals.
Students are going to need proficiency in certain skills for future careers, so taking the time to promote skills like communication and critical thinking in an English class, for example, would be helpful. The same can be applied to a science class, focusing on highlighting skills like problem solving and investigation. The list goes on from there. The problem is that we cannot be certain which skills will be the most relevant for today’s students in the coming years. We have to rely on probability to give us a hint. In any case, if students are given the chance to continue working on skills like coding in every subject throughout the day, the chances they will be ready for future careers is improved. If not, they could end up having to learn fundamental skills while everybody else their age is already established.
What Happens when Career Readiness Starts Early On
Sure, much of a student’s future preparation is done in high school. More and more educators, however, are discovering that you don’t have to wait until students are nearing college to start exposing them to what their futures will be like. In some districts, introducing students to potential future careers is a process that begins as early on as preschool. This is done primarily to get them thinking in the backs of their minds about what they might want to pursue and about some of the skills they should focus on. If educators are able to provide students with repeated (and that’s the key word) exposure to this type of thinking, they will eventually begin to form their own views of what skills are important. The more teachers talk to young students about careers, the more they envision themselves going to college and working in those fields.
Research also shows that, without consistent conversations, students may never have the desire to pursue a college education or chase down one of the future’s most promising careers. A students’ career preparation can be thought of as a years-long transition—one they are preparing for from the first day they enter an elementary school. Aside from teaching kids the proper mindset from Day 1, school curricula can be designed in such a way that they help students prepare for careers as well. By combining state standards with opportunities for real-life application, career exploration, and project-based learning, educators are able to meet their requirements and still keep students thinking about potential future opportunities. This kind of innovative approach can allow students to see what various careers might be like, what skills they would need for them, and if they have a passion for that kind of work.
The biggest benefit of this kind of system is that it is applicable to students of all ages. Though it sounds like something more geared towards high school students, exposing younger kids to a variety of careers can pay dividends as well. For example, if students in different grade levels each focus on different potential future careers, they will have gained a lot of valuable insight into what they might need to know, what they like, and what they don’t like. As they move through different grade levels, they will recognize where their interests are after exploring food, natural resources, and agriculture in first grade, for example. Then, maybe by third grade, they have an idea of how business, marketing, and management works. Then, in middle school, they could learn more about research skills, sales, or communication. Of course, there are plenty of routes to take and a number of different areas that educators could focus on, but giving students a general idea of as many career options as possible could certainly help them narrow things down and discover a passion.
Improving Career Readiness with PBL
Succeeding in the future workforce is not all about being book smart. We’re not always able to study in order to be able to solve the problems of tomorrow on the fly. That’s where skills like adaptation, organization, and problem solving come into play and these skills are best learned through active engagement in school. As the world continues to evolve, the skills students need for career success are changing with it. The qualified workers needed to fill jobs both in the present and the future are not always available and that’s due, in large part, to them not possessing the skills that modern careers demand. More than ever before, there is a focus on the skills that people possess rather than just the knowledge that drives their success and establishes their worth in the workforce. And, gaining these skills is best done through hands-on learning, project-based experiences, and active educational endeavors.
In order to ensure today’s students are prepared for these demands, educational leaders need to establish an agreed-upon vision for what a career-ready graduate looks like. This can be unique to every school or district, but, once established, project-based learning can be leveraged to both improve student engagement and extend academic achievement while simultaneously driving career readiness. Along with the demand for technical skills, it is predicted that, over the next decade, there is going to be a greater need for social and emotional skills as well as higher cognitive skills, which is why PBL is valuable in bolstering career readiness. When engaged in long term, collaborative projects, students are able to get a sense of what it is like to work as part of a team in the real world and the development of these skills is essentially a byproduct of working in this type of environment.
Students in school today are going to be expected to possess cross-sector competencies that will allow them to be successful in many different facets of the future economy. Project-based is certainly one of the most effective ways to ensure their readiness as it helps them develop skills like active listening, critical thinking and clear communication. A recent survey indicated that over 40 percent of college graduates were not proficient in these areas, something that could likely stem from a lack of experiential learning in the K-12 grades. Now that we have more of an idea of what skills graduates need and are able to focus on making them cross-sector competent, it should be a bit easier to truly prepare every student for the real world. In developing and implementing meaningful curriculum, it is imperative that educators look not only to boost their students’ knowledge but also their readiness for the real world.
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