Our Framework
Awareness
Career awareness happens in the classroom and is connected directly to student learning. Businesses support teachers by identifying real problems for students to solve.
Career awareness refers to experiences that students have in the classroom as early as kindergarten that allow them to learn about different careers. These experiences are curated and implemented by educators and embedded throughout the curriculum. Through career awareness activities, teachers can help connect content, such as Biology, Physics, or Mathematics, with real world problems, resulting in an increase in student engagement.
Students become aware of how the skills and practices they are using in the classroom are similar to what a professional in that field would actually do. For example, students might learn about what a conservation biologist does and how it’s similar to what the fourth graders are doing as they strive to help preserve the population of pika living in the Columbia River Gorge.
These types of activities can help students imagine themselves in certain roles and expand their perspective of the available careers in their community and beyond. They also serve as a “window” to help students get a glimpse into the professional life of a person who is solving real problems in the real world. The hope is that as students progress through school this “window” will transform into a door of opportunity through a more concrete pathway.
How we support Career Awareness
Our team works to build a bridge between the classroom and industry to support teachers in making meaningful connections between the content standards and the application of these knowledge and skills in the real world.
nPower teachers
Through our nPower teachers program, we take teachers on externships where they visit a STEM industry partner and learn about the numerous careers opportunities that are present in that field.
Project-Based Learning
We are also a provider of extensive training and coaching in Project-Based Learning, which helps teachers to develop learning experiences that authentically connect to a problem outside of the classroom and engages students in practicing the skills needed for success in the real world.
STEM Storylines
For Elementary teachers, our STEM Storylines are a simple way to make career connections explicit in the science instruction. Each storyline introduces a career that is connected to the phenomenon that students are exploring.