Crisis-Proofing Today's Learners: Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow's World

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program, Jean Eddy. Jean is the President and CEO of American Student Assistance, where she has pivoted ASA from a 65-year history of helping students with college financing and repayment options to a new focus of helping students discover potential career paths earlier in their education journey before financing or repayment issues. Jean came to ASA with more than 25 years of experience creating and leading education organizations, serving as the chief operating officer at the Rhode Island School of Design, senior vice president for students and enrollment at Brandeis University, and holding multiple roles in the financial services and enrollment areas during a 12-year tenure at Northeastern University. And she's the author of the new book, Crisis Proofing Today's Learners, Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow's World.

[01:03] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[01:06] SPEAKER_00:

Jean, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[01:08] SPEAKER_01:

Very happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

[01:10] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Gina, I'm excited to talk about this book and about your organization's work in helping students plan for their careers, plan for what they will do as adults. As you worked with students in their college planning, as college students and as borrowers needing to repay their loans, what were some of the warning signs that you saw that we needed to think about some of these issues differently that led you to write the book?

[01:36] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think first and foremost, in my college career, I met with many young people who were really struggling to try and figure out what it is they were doing there. And that sounds pretty simplistic, but it really wasn't. And oftentimes kids think that they're going to go to college and they're going to figure out what they want to do with their lives by the time they leave. But what ends up happening is they become more and more stressed and nervous when they find that they're trying this and they're trying that, and they really can't figure it out. They can't identify something. And they oftentimes end up changing majors, or worse yet, they drop out.

[02:15]

Concurrently, when you listen to what people who are paying their loans or trying to repay their loans say, they will very often say things like, I wish I had known before I took out all of these loans what I was going to do. And it might be that it wasn't so much that they couldn't find a career when they left college, but the career that they ended up finding falling in love with could not support the student loan payments that they had taken up. So when you put those two things together, you're moved to, okay, what can we do to make sure that before someone is making that big decision about going to college, what kind of information, what kind of opportunities can we give them to help them make more informed decisions?

[03:05] SPEAKER_00:

Right. And certainly, you know, changing one's major is not the end of the world by itself. I probably had three or four majors before I settled on what I actually got my degree in. But for students who don't ultimately leave college with a degree, this is a very expensive learning process where they're taking on student loans while they're figuring out that this is actually not the path for them. Is that right?

[03:29] SPEAKER_01:

Yes, absolutely. And I'll ask you the question, when you were changing majors a few times, did it Add years on to your college education. Did you graduate in four years? How long did it take you to graduate?

[03:41] SPEAKER_00:

I graduated in four years, but I realized I was out of time to change majors again.

[03:47] SPEAKER_01:

Now you're making my point.

[03:48] SPEAKER_00:

This is it.

[03:50] SPEAKER_01:

You're making my point. College is very expensive these days. You know, depending upon where you go, you're looking at 80 plus thousand dollars a year. And so parents are looking at this bill and saying, okay, is this a four-year commitment? Is this a five-year commitment? Is it a six-year commitment?

[04:11]

And just think about the fact that for every additional year, it's more money that has to be, in a lot of cases, be borrowed.

[04:19] SPEAKER_00:

And certainly we would rather students end up in a career that's the good fit for them without those loans, if at all possible. I'm also thinking about countries that have more of a fixed apprenticeship system and we have a lot of career focused middle schools and high schools that maybe encourage students to explore careers. Take us into that landscape a little bit. What does it look like to help students think about what they might want to do as adults while they're still in middle school and high school? And what are some of the sweet spots for making some of those decisions? Because certainly we don't want any student who would thrive in college and benefit from college to rule it out prematurely.

[04:58]

But at the same time, we don't want to end up where we have been for so many students, which is debt and student loans that they can't pay back that did not lead to a fulfilling career.

[05:07] SPEAKER_01:

I think that answering that question is almost like peeling an onion because there are so many aspects to this and there are so many layers to this, but I'll give it a go. Countries who have really good apprenticeship programs. And I have talked to some folks who are actually working with schools in Europe that are basically making it easier for students to figure out how to get these apprenticeships through digital engagement, which has really been a boon to that. Unfortunately, within the States, we are not there yet. We are just not there. But I think that our belief, my belief, is that the first thing that has to happen is you have to engage a young person early enough in the process so that they can identify what it is that they really love to do.

[05:57]

And I'm not saying I really love basketball, so I'm going to go be an NBA player. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, what are the kinds of things you love to do? And then figure out also the things that you're good at, and then align that with the careers that are possible. And it's not just pick one. It is a direction.

[06:19]

It is a body of opportunities that kids can try. Middle school is prime time. because young people are still very curious about themselves at that point, and they are not afraid to make decisions on their own. The later you get in this cycle as kids get into high school, then it's all about what their parents like, what their peers like, and it doesn't give them the opportunity to really kind of identify what's right for them. Testing and trying is absolutely Absolutely key in high school. And this is where an apprenticeship program could really make a huge difference.

[06:58]

Because kids could start to try things to see if indeed this is what they may like to do. It also gives kids an opportunity to try things that they're not familiar with. You know, most of us, when we were growing up, were looking at our parents and our parents' friends saying, okay, what are they doing? Well, I guess I'll be one of those. You know, if my father's a lawyer, I guess I'm going to be a lawyer or a doctor or for that matter, a plumber. In the trades, that's usually how kids get into the trades because someone in their family has been in that profession.

[07:34]

But giving a kid an opportunity to do an apprenticeship allows them to really figure out if they like it or they don't. It also gives them some opportunity to make some money. And an apprenticeship has that going for it. It also helps employers because so many employers are having a really difficult time hiring folks, particularly in the skilled trades areas. It gives them an opportunity to actually create a pipeline of workers to be able to come in and fill the jobs that they have not been able to fill. But primarily, I would say that if a young person gets that chance to explore, gets an opportunity to do an apprenticeship or an internship, Internships are just a little bit shorter and they're not, they don't pay so that a lot of kids are prohibited from doing that because they can't afford to take the time to do it.

[08:28]

The other thing I would say that kids really need are mentors and mentors can help in high school, particularly again, in fields that a young person might be interested in. If you put that all together, then a young person has a plan by the time they leave high school. And I would say, that this isn't a case of an either or. I would say that a young person who decides that college is the place I need to be in order to fulfill on my career wish, they are going to be better able to fulfill on that than if they did not have this prep time. But I would also say all kinds of jobs are going to be discovered that don't require a degree, but maybe some kind of training. if kids can go through this process and do the discovery work that really needs to get done.

[09:19] SPEAKER_00:

Let's talk just as a quick sidebar here, if we could, about the idea of college for all, because certainly for many years, there was a strong push and probably a long overdue push to get more kids to consider college, to get more kids to be prepared for college. And yet the double-edged sword of that is that we now have some 36 million Americans who went to some college, did not graduate, maybe have some debt. And we've seen the cost of perhaps pushing too hard or overreaching on that college for all mindset. How do we maintain high expectations and encourage students to consider college without pushing too many students into a path that may be wrong for them? You said the internship model at the high school level absolutely is appropriate for students who do plan to go to college as well.

[10:10] SPEAKER_01:

Yes, absolutely. Because it gives them an opportunity to figure out if the area that they're thinking about exploring is absolutely the right one for them. So absolutely. I think the biggest challenge we have right now is that college has become so expensive. And because it has, those folks who are out there, those 36 million people who are out there who did not complete college, most probably have sizable debt that they are having a hard time repaying and they don't have the kind of job that or perhaps not even the training for the job that they're currently in that will allow them to get through that debt and get on with their lives and so have to do a better job in having young people having anyone who is interested in going to college be fully informed before they start

[11:07]

investing those kinds of dollars. And I would say that most of the American public right now, at least from the stats that I see, are questioning the cost.

[11:17] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. With college inflation rising much faster than inflation in the economy in general, certainly the demand for people with college degrees is still there, but the return on investment certainly has shifted. Let's talk in a little bit more depth, if we could, about some of the specific things that can be put in place for young people to explore careers, consider careers that they might not have otherwise considered, have internships. I feel like this is such a delicate issue because as soon as you start talking about apprenticeship or internship or externship or careers, people start to think, wait a minute, you're saying my kid can't go to college, right? I think we're still very sensitive about this issue of college and not gatekeeping college, encouraging kids to really consider it. How do we encourage kids to consider other things?

[12:03]

What does that look like in a way that does not discourage college as well?

[12:08] SPEAKER_01:

I think information is going to be the key to this. Most of the time, The information that is needed about any career, whether you're prepared for that career through a college education, through a training program, through an apprenticeship, whatever it may happen to be, there has to be more information about that in order to actually say, okay, at the end of this rainbow, there is going to be a career here, no matter how we got here. I always tell the story, and I'm sure that if anybody has heard me on another podcast, I apologize before this story comes out of my mouth, but I nonetheless will say it. Massachusetts, where I reside, where ASA is based, is blessed with lots of fine hospitals, lots of high tech, many, many areas that put us on the map.

[13:00]

And certainly, we have many colleges, many good ones. Yet, we have shortages. and skilled workers across a number of areas, whether it be healthcare, whether it be the trades, manufacturing, tech, all of them. We can't fill jobs. I maintain the reason why we can't fill jobs is because young people do not know that they exist. So how can they pursue something that they don't know exists?

[13:27]

So the story I tell. is I have my primary care physician in Massachusetts from one of the major hospitals oftentimes talks to me about, you know, what I'm doing today. I would say most people are pretty interested when you talk about helping young people find their path and find their career. And when we're talking, she told me that or asked me if I was aware that a primary care physician in Massachusetts makes less than a plumber. That's fact. Annually.

[13:59]

Fact. I would say most people don't realize that many of the skilled trades can actually result in a very fruitful, rewarding career. And until we get that information out there, we are going to continue to have this dichotomy of, well, non-degree pathway is less than.

[14:25] SPEAKER_00:

It's just absurd. Well, Gene, it seems to me that one of the benefits of college has proven pretty durable is just the predictability that if you get a college degree, you're going to be able to get certain kinds of jobs with that degree, even if those jobs have changed a bit. And we've seen different kind of boom and bust cycles of supply and demand. I think there was a big pharmacy school boom 15 or 20 years ago, and then that resulted in a glut of pharmacists and then depressed pharmacist salaries and certain there are always going to be those kinds of cycles. And when we're thinking about people who are in middle school and high school now, they may be holding jobs as adults that don't exist today. And it may be that there's not time for industry or for schools to develop programs to specifically train students for those jobs.

[15:15]

So where is kind of the sweet spot of specificity and responsiveness when it comes to that preparation and training? Or when we're helping students explore possible careers, explore trades, are they getting that level of kind of general purpose preparation that they would get in college? Is it more specific to a particular trade? Take us into some of the possibilities there and how that earlier exposure, earlier exploration lines students up for those careers that they may ultimately hold.

[15:44] SPEAKER_01:

In fact, there's one whole chapter in my book where I talk about the things that I believe kids need in order to be career ready, you know, to not be on the cliff all the time and perhaps, you know, one crisis away from not having the future they really deserve. There are things called durable skill skills that I would dare say every young person needs to have. Things like Communication. Even college graduates these days, employers will say that they are concerned because they don't have the communication skills that they would expect. People don't write the way they used to write. They can't present a case or a problem and an argument what employers would expect that they could.

[16:34]

So there were a number of problem-solving skills, the communication skills, all of those things will help a young person be ready for anything. But I will also tell you that young people have to be digitally fluent. Absolutely have to be. Because it's going to be required. It's more and more required in everything we do. And in addition to that, they need to understand analysis, where they can look at a problem and be able to pick it apart and be able to put forth a solution.

[17:07]

We need to make sure that our kids are armed with those skills. And another thing they need to understand too, is that they are going to, young people are going to change their careers because of, as you're saying, the unknown and things are going to change and kids need to adapt. Adaptability is a big issue for me, that kids have to be able to see how they can move with it and continue to be a lifelong learner in this whole process. But I do think that if they have those durable skills, if they understand the digital world, and the beauty of that is at least kids now have grown up with this. So this is not like imposing something on kids who have even been going out of school.

[17:57]

Most of these young people have been digitally fluent since they were toddlers. So this is a pretty easy thing as long as the analysis goes along with it.

[18:08] SPEAKER_00:

Love it. That idea of durable skills and adaptability. And back to the title of the book around crisis-proofing our learners. Is that what you mean in terms of crisis-proofing? You know, just the ability to respond to industry changes?

[18:20] SPEAKER_01:

Totally. Industry changes. Think about what happened with the pandemic. And suddenly, young people were sent home and schools had to try and figure out how they were going to deliver their curriculum. And so Zoom...

[18:37]

became kind of the classroom for many. I would dare say that, and it's been reported certainly, that there has been an awful lot of learning loss in that period. And it has got everything to do with the fact that we weren't ready for an alternative for what happens if you're not in the classroom. So the whole notion of hybrid learning, being able to learn beyond the classroom, is something that we started to learn during the pandemic, but an awful lot of kids had a really serious impact because of that. A lot of kids are not graduating from high school because of that.

[19:18] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Jane, let's talk, if we could, a little bit about what this can look like for specific schools. If you are a middle school principal or a high school principal and you want your students to, of course, be prepared for college, but also seriously consider all of the options that are on the table for them, what can that look like at the middle school and high school levels?

[19:36] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I would say that ASA has had many fruitful partnerships with school systems. And what is really nice about the work we do is the fact that school systems, many school systems, many superintendents, teachers are very interested in getting at this problem of making the school day be relevant as far as how it connects to a career. And And if you think about it, I always pick on algebra. My own kids would come to me and say, why am I wearing this? I'm never going to, I'm never going to use this. Why am I learning this?

[20:18]

When in actuality, there are a million ways you can show them that they're going to use algebra in life, in a career, et cetera. We have done grants with school and one in particular I'll talk about, which is in the middle of Massachusetts. We were approached by a superintendent who had an idea. that her middle school kids needed to have exploration classes, but there was nowhere to put it in the curriculum because teachers have packed days and they have lots of responsibilities to deliver certain things. So when you talk about, all right, let's throw career exploration in here. Where?

[20:56]

Where are we going to put it? How are we going to do it? It really requires some really forward-thinking teachers, as well as a principal who wants to get on board, as well as the superintendent. Fortunately, we had a perfect storm, and I say that in a good way, happening in the school district. And the superintendent approached us and said, will you help us? because we don't have the funds to be able to do this, to change the curriculum.

[21:26]

We need to bring in a special faculty to be able to do these exploration classes because we want to have every seventh and eighth grader here be able to do that. So we worked with them, we did fund them, and we helped them develop career exploration classes for every single seventh and eighth grader in that school. So we did pre and post surveys. And what we found was that some kids, and we gave them an array of things to look at, whether it was design or computer science or the arts or really high tech. And what we found was that kids in the pre-test and post-test, we had a number of kids say, I love this. I want to do more.

[22:08]

How can I do more to take the next step in learning about this thing? And remember, seventh and eighth graders are picking classes in high schools. So if they have some idea about what they're interested in and what they like, the idea that they're going to be able to choose high school classes with more ease is certainly a plus out of that. But we also had kids who said, I can't stand this. I had a great time exploring, but I can't stand this. I will never touch this again.

[22:36]

But that is exactly what learning should be. We have a partnership with a school district right outside of San Diego, California. And that school system starts in kindergarten with having young people figure out what it is that they're good at, what they love to do. We work with them to help them infuse how courses relate to the real world in every single course. So you can walk into a biology class. You can walk into a history class.

[23:10]

And in each class, that faculty member is going to be able to have relatable topics to make it feel like, yes, this is important to me. This is how I can connect with it. They also bring in experts within the fields that they are talking about in the career space to have them meet with the kids, talk to the kids, and be able to answer questions and to see a day in the life. So we do that as well. We worked with the state of Delaware. Delaware is pretty progressive when it comes to career education.

[23:46]

They have career exploration and testing and trying in all of their high schools. We came together with a few other foundations to fund bringing that experience to all middle schoolers in Delaware. So that's happening right now. And of course, I would have to say, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the fact that we offer, ASA offers, free digital experiences to kids in middle school and high school to do all of these things so that they understand all of the options that they have open to them.

[24:25] SPEAKER_00:

I should clarify, we're really not talking about tracking here, right? This will ring tracking bells for a lot of people, but this is not what we're talking about at all, where we're separating students into college and vocational tracks that don't overlap, right? We're talking about opportunities for every student, right?

[24:39] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely not. We are not putting anybody in a particular designation at all. This is really about a personal journey for a young person. That's what it is.

[24:52] SPEAKER_00:

And just as we want all students to be academically prepared for college, if that's the path for them, it occurs to me that it would not hurt our society to better prepare all students to be able to do things other than college. One of the things I realized for moving to an area where not a lot of people have been to college is just how many things in the real world I didn't know how to do. Right. If you spend time around people who, you know, work with their hands for a living, you realize just how many things as a college educated person, you didn't have to learn. And as a result, kind of at a disadvantage in a lot of situations, like I barely knew how to use a drill until I was in my 30s. And I would not at all have regretted.

[25:33]

having taken, you know, woodshop or metal shop or some more experiences that, you know, perhaps were more common in times past. I love the idea of opening more possibilities to more people to really give every student the opportunity to fully explore. So you talked about some digital experiences that students can do even at the middle school level. What are some of those digital experiences look like?

[25:57] SPEAKER_01:

So we produce something called future networks. And basically what that does is allows young people, middle schoolers, to watch videos about kids their own age who are doing various things. They're either following someone that they're interested in the profession, or they are trying to share, a young person is sharing an experience that they've had. And by that, I mean, one of the videos we have is a young person, young woman, who is trying to convince her parents that she wants to be a gamer. And so the video was called Pitch. And so it basically films a young woman making the case with her parents that she wants to be a gamer and this is why, et cetera.

[26:45]

Now, I don't know if you have kids or you have kids in this age group, but middle school kids love to watch other kids do stuff, whether it's to play Fortnite or whatever it happens to be. So these videos are wildly popular. We have 27 of them. And it can be that it's a pitch video. There is certainly following someone in the day of the life. There is some video about someone who actually fails at something and how they came out the other side.

[27:15]

There's a whole host of them. From that, we offer kids an opportunity to do exploring. And through that, they take a, well, they're doing quizzes and games. They're having fun while they're doing it, but at the same time, they are indicating things that they are good at and they're talented at, some of their skills and abilities. And after they finish going through these gates, they end up in what looks like a planetarium. And within this planetarium, there are big planets, small planets, some huge that are glowing, some smaller.

[27:51]

The big glowing planets are the areas of interest that this young person should explore. So it might be that you have a fascination with bugs, let's say. And suddenly, all the careers about what you can do if you're interested in bugs comes up. And kids can go deeper and deeper, up to absolutely following epidemiologists through their day. And that one's called Futurescape. Then we have a program that basically allows young people to test and try things.

[28:27]

We call it Evolve Me. And they can learn how to do an interview. They can get an internship. They can get a mentor. They can learn how to be a gamer. They can take a course in Python.

[28:41]

They can do stuff in financial literacy, a whole host. We have 90 different opportunities that they can test and try with so that they have more of a sense of who they are, what they like, what careers are out there, and a direction that they might take. All of it is free. We use social media to go out and connect with kids. We interact with about 15 million kids in this age group. And it's not meant to do anything more than complement what's happening in our classroom.

[29:16] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is Crisis Proofing Today's Learners, Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow's World. And I would certainly recommend that anyone who wants to learn more about how to do this work, read the book, check it out for yourself. And Jean, if people want to learn more about some of the videos that you talked about, the experiences that your organization provides, where's the best place for them to go online to learn more about that?

[29:38] SPEAKER_01:

afa.org.

[29:40] SPEAKER_00:

Really easy. Well, Jean, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. Pleasure has been mine. Thank you.

[29:47] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.