By Maren Madalyn, contributing writer
I am endlessly curious. Growing up, it meant that, while I enjoyed exploring tons of different things, I never quite settled on one true “passion.”
ParentPowered’s Director of Marketing, Mary Westervelt is also a curious individual. We recently reflected on our journeys from high school to the careers we each enjoy today. Central to our discussion was how academic career planning impacted our trajectories.
For me, my academic plans carried me through high school, into university, and even into my first job. But it was only when I worked in that special education classroom that I discovered my passion was not in social work (as I thought for the past 8 years). Rather, I loved child development — and empowering the educators teaching kids. Yet more years of trial, error, and self-discovery helped me find my (current) happy place as a content creator in K12 education.
Westervelt’s journey into marketing was even more zig-zag in nature. As a teen, she originally envisioned working in anthropology, after her English teacher pointed her to the field during a conversation about her many interests. She focused all of her academic career planning on this path.
After another winding path led her to two different colleges and a brief period working abroad in Central America, Westervelt finally emerged victorious with her bachelor’s degree in anthropology — and had no idea what to do with it.
“This wasn’t a conversation I had in high school or even college,” she reflected. “I focused so much on ‘Do you have an anthropology department?’ and then ‘How do I graduate with this degree?’ But I never dug into how to turn this into a career.”
Rather than pursue a PhD as nearly all anthropologists do, Westervelt moved through a series of administrative jobs before being introduced to the world of marketing. She taught herself about the field, pursued an MBA in order to deepen her expertise, and today, puts all of her skills towards supporting ParentPowered’s mission.
Does this career story feel familiar to you or a student in your life?
For many teens, it might feel as though they need to know exactly what career path they want after graduation, and exactly how they need to pursue it. These stories illustrate that, while academic career planning is important, it’s also just the beginning of the journey, and each student’s experience can be wildly different from one another.
But there was one key resource both I and Westervelt deeply appreciated as we formed our career paths: our families.
Let’s explore the impact that academic career planning can have on a student’s future goals, and the critical role that caregivers and parents play in supporting these journeys — however winding they may be.
Preparing students for their futures: The role of academics
Though obvious to many educators, it bears repeating that academic planning is important to students’ future success.
When educators or families first think of academics and future readiness, their thoughts may first go towards preparing for college coursework or other postsecondary education. Yes, academic learning is core to a student’s readiness to move into more rigorous learning environments — but it’s also crucial for students who want to directly enter the workforce or enroll in vocational training opportunities.
Academics are also only one piece of the college and career readiness puzzle. Social and emotional learning that cultivates key life skills is also important in supporting students to transition from high school into the “real world” as adults (Dymnicki et al, 2013).
Still, academic career planning matters. Research shows important connections between preparing for the future and academic learning. A longitudinal study found that adolescents who engaged early in career planning tended to experience higher academic achievement (Negru-Subtirica & Pop, 2016).
This planning is about supporting kids with developing the skills and knowledge they need to move into the career path of their choice and enjoy post-secondary success — whether it includes more education after high school or not.
More educators are tackling the importance of career and college readiness
In 2020, at least 44 states in the U.S. either mandated or strongly encouraged high schools to utilize education and career plans with students.
For example, in 2015 Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction revised their existing Education for Employment program to better support students and their families across the state with establishing clear roadmaps towards future goals related to career choices. In Indiana, the Department of Education collaborated with the Commission for Higher Education to develop a framework integrating career exploration with academic preparedness for students in grades K-12.
Many states have also adopted some form of career or college readiness standards woven into central academic standards for math, science, literacy, and more. Some districts may offer Career and Technical Education pathways to their high school students as a means to connect academic learning and speciality skills development with specific vocations and other postsecondary opportunities.
Across all of these strategies lies a common thread: engaging families as partners.
Why engage families in academic career planning
From the moment a student is born, families play an essential role in helping prepare their child for their futures as adults.
There is a plethora of research supporting the value of effective family engagement in schools at all ages — including high school, when career or college preparation is front and center for most students. Insights gleaned from a nation-wide study in 2021 point to the immense benefit of family and teacher involvement in students’ career choices and future planning. For students “who received support from a teacher or a parent to develop their plan. . . [and] who met with an adult in school to review the plan at least once a year, developing a plan was significantly associated with several college‑going behaviors.”
But there’s another incentive to tap into the power of family engagement: supporting school counselors.
Research repeatedly highlights that school and career counseling positively impact a high schooler’s successful transition either into higher education, vocational training, or the workforce. But such outcomes depend on a counselor’s capacity to work individually with each and every one of their students.
When the average school counselor manages a caseload of over 400 teens, that expectation seems nearly impossible to meet.
That’s where families can help! By engaging with caregivers and important adults in a student’s life, school counselors have the opportunity to expand career development activities and planning beyond their limited windows of time with each student.
It’s no wonder that educators are seeking opportunities to bring parents and caregivers into academic career planning. They can make a huge difference. . . when they are set up for success.
As the Texas Council on Family-School Engagement explains, “Families play an important role in helping students navigate educational and career decisions, and they are influential in shaping students’ perceptions about what is possible for their futures. Yet families need knowledge, guidance, and resources to support their children in making educational and career decisions.”
Many educators are taking this wisdom to heart as they design academic and career planning resources for students. One school district in Wisconsin shares a fact sheet with parents explaining opportunities to get involved in career planning throughout the school year. The Nebraska State Department of Education offers families and career counselors a series of conversation starters as an entry point to support their teens.
The question is — how can educators build habits of effective family engagement around academic career planning, from elementary to high school?
Partnering with families: Academic career planning that evolves alongside students
Let’s take a closer look at how effective family engagement strategies invite caregivers to become collaborators (and eventually, co-pilots) in a student’s journey to plan their futures.
Elementary School
Though not explicitly in focus, career planning can start as early as elementary school. Indirectly, children are learning about and exploring all kinds of potential pathways for their futures. They may play pretend games, becoming a chef or a firefighter in a way to “practice” what that job might look and feel like with vivid imagination. Elementary school students also observe careers around them in the world, including those jobs that family or community members may work in.
During this young age, academic career planning is really about supporting students with mastering the fundamentals of math, literacy, and social-emotional learning, all of which will serve them later on in both secondary school and the world beyond.
Among its elementary school standards, the American School Counselor Association also encourages strengths-based career conversations that help students develop a positive attitude towards learning, self-confidence in their ability to succeed, and a mindset of curiosity and persistence.
Families are well positioned to support elementary students and their academic success in hands-on ways, as well as foster healthy attitudes towards classroom learning and its connection with future career choices.
Tips for engaging families
- Offer families prompts to get kids talking about school or what interests them. Parents can ask questions like, “What do you like learning in school and why?” to get these conversations started. Download our family resource guide to share with your families today!
- Encourage caregivers to point out all the different jobs they see as they move through their daily routines. Taking a walk through the park? A caregiver can share how a gardener keeps plants healthy and a landscape designer creates different park features. Reading a favorite book? A family member can talk about the author who wrote the story, or the illustrator who made the pictures, or the team that’s responsible for making the book itself.
- Highlight ways in which families can (and already do) promote key social-emotional skills related to self-reflection, positive self talk, and a growth mindset. Self confidence is a critical ingredient in planning for any future. The earlier students build their self esteem, the better it serves them as they get into the practical steps involved in achieving those futures. Parents can celebrate their child’s strengths during bedtime routines or over mealtime each day, modeling this by celebrating their own capabilities.
Read our recent article for more career exploration tips for K-12 students.
Middle School
As students move into adolescence, academic expectations can dramatically shift. Students may no longer work with just one or two teachers, but a whole roster of educators. They become increasingly responsible for managing their time, homework, transitions between classes, and more. Adolescents want to be more independent, too.
For families, this transition also marks a shift in their involvement in learning and future planning for middle schoolers. Rather than continuing to operate as the “captain,” caregivers adopt the “co-pilot” approach. When families use their own educational beliefs and experiences to help their children navigate academic learning, it yields greater benefits for adolescents than the “hands-on” approach often used in elementary grade levels (Hill & Tyson, 2009).
This includes academic career planning. Middle schoolers need space to explore different pathways while simultaneously staying engaged in their academic learning and understanding how to realistically achieve their career dreams. Most importantly, adolescents need the opportunity to take risks and “try on different future selves”, as Nancy Deutsch of the University of Virginia puts it in a 2022 Hechinger Report article.
As students are already exploring self-identity and their place in the world during this age, middle school presents an excellent opportunity for caregivers to support their pre-teens with career exploration in parallel with student achievement, whether it’s through work-based learning, career research, or classroom projects. And caregivers can help!
Tips for engaging families
- Support caregivers in their transition from captain to copilot by explaining the importance of connecting academic learning with career planning. Parents may not always recognize this link in middle school, and there are so many small opportunities each day to support their child with identifying potential career goals. ParentPowered’s family engagement programs can help here — take a self-paced tour to see how our programs scaffold family engagement in everything from career exploration to social-emotional development to academic independence.
- Encourage families to deepen career conversations with their pre-teens. Asking specific questions about why particular subjects or career options matter to them gives adolescents a chance to express their own opinions (a key SEL skill) and connect their values with future work opportunities for students.
- Provide middle school families with free, accessible career research tools and resources, such as CareerOneStop, Creative Careers Online, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, and O*Net Interest Profiler. These are great starting points for pre-teens to discover what it might take to become a scientist, or a writer, or a teacher, helping them make informed choices about coursework and extracurricular activities.
High School
Given how early career planning truly begins, you can look at the high school years as a culmination. It is here that a student brings together all those years of academic learning, early career exploration, and social-emotional development into a practical, concrete plan for their future — becoming career-ready as they prepare to enter life after graduation.
Just as learning itself is an ongoing process, teens may reshape their pathway towards a desired career or educational opportunity during all four years. And families still matter tremendously here!
Of course, the first milestone for many career plans is high school graduation. Helping caregivers and their teens understand the academic requirements to earn a diploma is a crucial part of this engagement.
Schools can also take action to educate families about the intricacies of college applications, offer free or accessible resources for exploring career education or skill requirements, share details about industry certifications needed for specific career pathways, and more.
But even a parent’s simple act of talking about careers with their high schooler yields powerful outcomes for their future — in fact, wage earnings go up by 0.8% by age 26 for every career conversation a teen has in middle and high school (OECD, 2017).
Tips for engaging families
- Keep families and students informed about graduation requirements for your schools as well as where parents can learn more about complex systems like the college application process or how to enlist in ROTC. Many schools will curate these resources on their website (like this high school in California did) but it’s important to spread this information far and wide. Consider partnering with community organizations to host workshops on these topics for families where they already gather regularly.
- Tap into your parent community when hosting career exploration events for your high schoolers. For example, if you are building a mentorship program, try inviting caregivers to participate and share their work experiences (as well as how their academic learning played a role). Here again, community organizations can be great allies for constructing accessible engagement opportunities for as many families as possible.
For more strategies to partner with high school families, explore our article unpacking career planning for high school students.
ParentPowered brings families and students together for successful career planning
Ready to uplevel your families’ engagement in college and career planning? ParentPowered has your back. Our whole-child, evidence-based family engagement programs evolve alongside students as they grow up, ensuring that parents and caregivers can nurture those academic, social, emotional, and life skills that matter most in adulthood, from birth through high school.
Join an upcoming info session to discover how our programs can help your organization meet its future-readiness goals while tapping into the power of family-school partnership.
About the author
Maren Madalyn has worked at the intersection of K12 education and technology for over a decade, serving in roles ranging from counseling to customer success to product management. She blends this expertise with fluid writing and strategic problem-solving to help education organizations create thoughtful long-form content that empowers educators.
