Inspiring High School Students to Think About Their Future

One of the most exciting aspects of being a teacher is seeing students discover who they are. Watching—at times nurturing—them become who they want to be. As a high school theater and English teacher, I had the luxury of building such experiences into many of my classroom discussions, papers, and projects.

But I still felt like it wasn’t enough. The goal was right—getting to know students. But the questions felt superficial at times. And while the intention was good, I wanted to push and support students, especially my seniors, to go deeper—to think harder about how they wanted to live and who they wanted to be.

I also faced one of the ubiquitous teacher problems: How does any of this tie into curriculum and standards?

Then I read “To Motivate Teens, Ask Them ‘Who’s Your Future Self?’” and discovered the Future Goals Gala, which sparked connections and illuminated possible goals for helping students think about their future and empowering them to create positive change.

As a believer in overarching themes, however, I struggled to figure out how to tie some of the must-dos on my list and what I might do into a coherent theme. Buoyed by other futures literacy writers and resources, a comprehensive learner-centered multimedia Futures Literacy Unit took shape: Three sections of tasks covering all four modes of writing (persuasive, narrative, expository, and descriptive); one theme connecting all the required components (senior curriculum staples like mock interviews, résumés, business plans, and scholarship essays) that also provided a wide-angle lens for futures thinking.

Gentle Beginnings: Rooted in Reality

The class began by exploring two questions: “Who are you?” and “Who do you want to be?” These basic questions provided a clear framework for most of our must-dos, those pieces that are part of the senior curriculum: résumé, mock interview, scholarship essay, and an informative research project.

It also presented a great opportunity for me to build in tasks that helped me get to know the students.

I was covering a colleague’s maternity leave, taking over their College Comp class as the first quarter wrapped up. These tasks provided a crash course in getting to know the class, but they would be equally beneficial for building deeper relationships with students I already knew.

A personal collage (see “Handouts”), a narrative reflection, and several journal prompts helped me learn about the class while providing fodder for each step of the project: The collage and narrative reflection built naturally to the résumé and scholarship essay; the Informative Research Project, which they shared in small group speeches, provided ample practice for their mock interviews; several journal writes (including one where I simply asked, “When you think about your past, what words come to mind?” and “When you think about your future, what words come to mind?” in an Office Form and created word clouds for each class) were stepping stones toward our second and third project questions.

Lesson learned: While the Futures Literacy Unit Overview was helpful and important for me to connect all the curriculum dots, the students found it very confusing. What was meant as a helpful “Hey, this is how all the seemingly random stuff we’re working on actually all fits together” backfired.

Instead of providing a big-picture overview of where we were going for the next eight weeks, this document sent the seniors into complete panic and confusion. I was a new-to-them teacher handing them an overwhelming list, and it didn’t make sense. While this may have been unique to this cohort and/or the unique circumstances of their getting used to me as a teacher, I share to perhaps save you the ire I faced.

Pushing Boundaries: Future Projections

Having covered all our must-dos, we shifted to thinking about the future, specifically, “What impact do you want to have on the world?” As is my custom, I created a unit slide deck using Canva to house all handouts, links, due dates, and instructions. This was our daily to-do list as well as a resource deck for students. Together, the class started to transition from thinking about “my future” (résumés, scholarship essays, business plans) to “our future.” And while I was not—am not—a Futures Literacy expert, the free futures resources available for teachers meant I could learn right with the students.

Groups jigsawed segments from A Brief History of the Future via the PBS LearningMedia Futures Literacy collection. They explored ideas in the Futures Design Studio. We did a brainstorming session about our frustrations, fears, and hopes for the future. We did a continuum debate (Philosophical Chairs, as one of my professors called it), sharing our anxiety or hope for the future. We discussed proactive versus reactive people and Stephen Covey’s Circle of Concern, Influence, and Control. Basically, they explored issues and ideas that were on their minds. They talked about their future.

Then they got to work on their Futures Thinking Gala projects. Inspired by the 30-year Gala (shared above), I asked the students to identify a problem that was making their future less than ideal. Since our primary focus was writing, I wanted to give students the freedom and responsibility of curating a variety of writing around one topic, something I explored in prior projects. Working solo or in teams of two to three, these artifacts would work together to tell the story of the problem, its causes, why others should care about the problem, and potential solutions. The addition of futures literacy increased the project’s relevance and necessity.

The Gala, then, shifted focus slightly. Everyone attended our 30-year reunion as if they had solved the problem they researched. I brought light refreshments and snacks; they brought their solutions. District staff, teachers, and administrators were invited to join us and hear about the projects. We mingled, people sharing “what they were up to” in the form of their solutions. Some explored teen mental health, others the health of our environment. Some dove into gender and sexual orientation discrimination, and others explored issues from their youth, like how Covid-19 changed their teen years.

I won’t oversell the results. Some students did the bare minimum, and I don’t think they got much out of the project or the process. But most of them explored issues that mattered to them right now. Will these projects change their futures? I doubt it. But I hope they felt that their voices mattered—that for a few weeks in English class, they got to think deeply about something important to them and then share their thinking with others. And maybe, just maybe, they had a touch of fun along the way.