3 Ways to Support Career-Focused Learning in High School

From our experience working in high schools, we want to make the case that career-connected learning is essential for engagement, relevance, and quality postsecondary planning. Whether you work in a comprehensive high school or a career and technical education (CTE) school, students benefit when career-connected learning is an integral part of the student experience. From work-based learning to career advisement, students gain key insight into their future when school is connected to the real world.

The problem is that these experiences are often like fitting a square peg into a round hole. In other words, the school system isn’t always set up to handle work experiences or even college planning as a formal process. Because of that, we recommend that high school leaders consider implementing the following three strategies.

1. Block Schedules

Moving to a block schedule is ideal for schools that are going to do more career-connected learning. In our experience, it’s just too disruptive to stick to the traditional seven- or eight-period schedule when we build in experiences such as work-based learning, internships, and off-campus events. The 4x4 block or modified A/B schedule allows for students to be placed on job sites for late-ins (starting school later in the day than normal) or early-outs (leaving school before the final periods of the day).

In this regard, students can go to work every other day on an A/B schedule or leave school every day after third period on a block schedule to participate in career-connected experiences. These could take place at community colleges where students extend their learning by earning a certificate or gaining specialized skills for a future career. We like to think of these experiences as an extension of an academic pathway and career-connected plan rather than isolated to just the ability to have a paid job during school hours.

An additional benefit of an A/B schedule is that academic teachers have longer periods to plan more substantial labs, projects, and discussions that can also be designed to support the career-connected learning taking place outside of class. High schools focused on career-connected learning help students link what they’re learning in school to practical application within a career field.

2. Advisory Periods

When high schools move to a block schedule, we also like to see an advisory period included on a consistent and regular basis. This might be once a week or once a marking period, but an altered schedule is necessary in order to fit a 30-to-90-minute period into the student day so that career-connected lessons and activities can be planned outside of the regular academic schedule. While these periods are often used to support academic engagement, including SAT/ACT prep, there is an opportunity to adapt similar structures to support career exploration, career planning, college advising, and application management.

We suggest that schools adopt or adapt a curriculum—purchased from a reputable source or developed by an in-house team of teachers, counselors, and other support staff—so that individual teachers don’t have to bear the full responsibility of planning and preparing these lessons and experiences.

Done well, these will be smaller class sizes, running simultaneously across the school with every adult supporting a group of students in a way that more individualized attention can be spent on helping students build their postsecondary plan. We also suggest that this program of work spans grades 9–12 with pre-built assignments and lessons where counselors and administrators can track progress, which is where our champion comes into play.

3. Identify a Champion

Schools are incredibly busy, and high schools in particular are sophisticated and complex. Principals have a lot of demands on their time, many of which are unpredictable and out of their control. A key strategy to ensure that career-connected learning takes root on a high school campus is to identify a champion for the program of work who can be the consistent presence and voice for the team. No matter how passionate the principal is, they can’t be the only person carrying this torch because there are too many places to be and conversations to have, which means that they must delegate the charge to someone equally passionate about it and who has a strong skill set of communication and strategic planning.

This champion needs to have clarity about the identified goals and high expectations for what each part of the program should look and feel like. Because of the nature of career-connected learning and the development of industry partners, the champion should be a great communicator who can work with a wide array of stakeholders—school leaders, teachers, outside partners, guest speakers, mentors, and more. Finding the right champion is essential because they set the tone for the initiative and all of its moving parts. In our experience in high schools, the champion for career-connected learning is a counselor, work-based learning specialist, CTE teacher, or assistant principal.

Career-Connected Learning Pays Off

We are huge proponents of career-connected learning; in fact, we often make the argument that it’s best for career-connected learning to start in kindergarten with career exposure and exploration, exist on a continuum through middle school, and culminate in high school with actual work experience.

We know that career-connected learning isn’t necessarily natural, even at the high school level. But, we’ve also built systems where every student earns a credit from their advisory period, earns work-based learning credit from an immersion experience with tracked hours and documentation, and graduates with a postsecondary plan.

Success in life after graduation isn’t guaranteed, but it’s far more likely when students know who and what they want to be, based on the experiences they received in K–12.