The conversation about career awareness–including career and technical education (CTE) courses–doesn’t typically begin until middle grades. In fact, some US state and federal regulations allocate funding for career and technical programming with language that directs the money toward secondary schools. Limitations, such as how dollars are funneled to schools, are unfortunate because elementary students, as early as kindergarten, can benefit from career exploration in a number of important ways. The reasons to bring career awareness into K-5 schools is not restricted to the following four explanations, but we aim to stoke the discourse at the school, district, and state level so that CTE is no longer just an aspect of the middle and high school experience. 

Exploration and Awareness

The first major reason why career awareness is so important for K-5 students is that many students are unaware of all of the various careers that they might be interested in doing later in life. Especially for marginalized students who don’t have access to as many books at home that contain characters with a wide variety of jobs, exposing students to careers gives them the knowledge and information that privileged students are more likely to have. That said, lots of children are only aware of the jobs that their parents and other family members do and not all of the options that will eventually be available to them. 

When students in K-5 schools have access to career exploration tools, they get to learn about jobs that even their teachers don’t know about. Without curriculum resources and technology tools that support student growth in this area, it’s impossiblefor students to learn about all the occupations and professions that they might like to pursue, and knowing about a future opportunity can spark purpose and passion for learning in school, which brings us to the second justification. 

Purpose and Passion

Exposure to careers has real benefits in the classroom for students and teachers. The typical rationale when a 2nd grader asks why they’re learning a particular subject is that they’ll need the information for the 3rd grade. We can all hear a 4th-grade teacher saying, “pay attention because you’ll need to know this to be successful in 5th grade.” But, that’s not a compelling case for every student, notably for reluctant learners. On the other hand, when students understand the skills they’ll need for certain jobs, and teachers also learn about those jobs alongside their students, there’s a much better argument to be made for the math lesson, for example. 

When students develop a passion for a future career path, they can apply that passion to learning and growth in the classroom. It’s true that some students become disenfranchised with school and the purpose of their education in early grades. Career exploration has the potential to thwart their indifference with school work. And, this can help teachers with everything from classroom management to student growth on standardized exams. It’s also much more helpful to say, “all of the careers we explored today have a huge emphasis on your ability to reason mathematically the way that we’re learning in this lesson.” We shift the conversation about school only serving itself to it being in service of life goals. 

Representation and Diversity 

A significant emphasis in the conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools is placed on the need to diversify the teaching workforce so that students can see themselves represented in school staff. This is of vital importance so that kids can connect with adults and also see themselves as teachers in the future. Although the effort to diversify the teacher workforce is critical, it’s slow in coming to fruition. “Grow your own” programs are doing good work in bringing more high school students into education majors and back into the classroom, but that can take years to diversify the staff as representative of the student population. Bringing in guest speakers for career awareness, on the other hand, makes it possible to put people who look like our students in front of them overnight. 

When students have access to video content, visiting presenters, and literature that includes a diverse community of people, we can spike the representation of what they hear and see about potential careers in days, not years. When we prioritize career exploration in the early grades, we’re not just doing the work to prepare students for their futures, we’re providing them with a visual representation of themselves in school. And, when they hear about the importance of education in being able to do certain jobs, especially when it comes from someone who looks like them, they can understand more deeply the importance of a quality education. 

Degrees and Certifications

Learning about careers helps students to put a greater emphasis on what they’re learning in school, and it also aids in their perception and appreciation for the degrees and certifications that they’ll need as part of their postsecondary plan. It’s one thing to learn about what it means to be an anesthesiologist, for example; it’s another thing to become aware of the level of schooling and the degrees and certifications necessary to be an anesthesiologist. Students should know that there are all kinds of career paths, trades, and military options, and they should also know that each of them comes with prerequisite credentials and more schooling after they graduate from the K-12 system. 

Information about degrees and certifications empowers students to make quality decisions about their future education needs after high school. Too often we hear people saying that “not all kids need to or want to go to college.” While there’s truth to the fact that not all students will go on to earn a 2- or 4-year degree, the likelihood of economic success after high school graduation without a certification, credential, trade, or military enrollment is very low. This is why students should grasp from as early an age as possible the education necessary to enter into the profession in which they aspire to be. 

Conclusion: Advocacy in the K-5 Space

Because the conversation about K-5 career exploration and career and technical education courses needs amplification, it’s important that school leaders share this information with a wide network of influential people. It’s wonderful to see states and districts that require career plans in middle schools, four-year academic plans before high school begins, published portrait of a graduate indicators, and work-based learning hours for every student, but it’s time to bring these conversations to the lower grades so that students are set up for success with the information necessary to do these things before they set foot in a secondary school. 

If you want to know more about how to help students explore careers in K-5 schools, contact us at MaiaLearning for thought leadership and a demo of Pathfinders, our K-5 gamified careers education platform.