Dive Brief:
- Since a North Carolina law began requiring middle and high school students to develop career plans with tailored online portfolios in 2024-25, Hayesville Middle School, in the western tip of the state, has enthusiastically taken on the challenge. The school helps students self-assess their interests and strengths while undertaking a “reality check” based on cost of living, taxes and what lifestyle they hope to achieve.
- The school also provides career development activities like visits from the local community college and career-related field trips, as well as lessons in money management, career exploration, community resources, and development of students' individualized goals and values.
- While the state mandates the career plans and portfolio, Hayesville wanted to ensure the experience was meaningful and inspirational for students rather than simply “checking a box,” said Tiffany Clapsaddle, the school’s principal. “We wanted to change the culture so students wanted to come to school.”
Dive Insight:
Such an initiative requires significant work, especially in a rural area like Hayesville, but it pays off, including on the social-emotional front, Clapsaddle said.
“You get them interested in that, and then you can work on the academics,” she said. “How can we make it fun for them and fun for us? … If you’re in education for the right reasons, and you want students to grow — whatever background they’re from, ethnicity, race — you’ve got to go in there and make those connections.”
At the outset, career development coordinator Erin McCoy attended a training on how to roll out the program through the College for North Carolina, and she started “playing with” different portfolio-building resources to share with the students, ultimately deciding on the free NC Careers tool.
“It was an online tool that students can easily access,” she said. “Students get in there and do work values assessments. We do the reality check where they make selections based on their desired lifestyle as an adult, where it calculates the cost of living. That’s a fun conversation, where we ask, ‘What careers are you looking at, and can you sustain your desired lifestyle?’”
There’s a significant difference between simply having the students filling out the assessments online and talking it through later with an adult and their peers, McCoy said, adding that they prompt students to think about their strengths in workplace-oriented qualities like communication, flexibility, curiosity and empathy.
“We’re sitting down and having one-on-one meetings, asking, ‘This is your competency and your strength — how are you going to use that in the career you selected?’” she said. “They’re putting more thought into their career choices, rather than, ‘Oh, that one makes a lot of money.’ This has them thinking strategically.”
And since it starts in sixth grade, McCoy said “it’s something they’re marinating in their whole middle-school experience.”
Students rank themselves from 1 to 5 in each quality, and they discuss those rankings in small groups of up to 10, in some cases resulting in gentle pushback, McCoy said.
“They might think they exhibit empathy on a regular basis,” she said. “When we break it down and talk about it, some of them are like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not a 5.’” And she asks: “How are you going to use those strengths to be successful?”
Clapsaddle points out that staff stay mindful they are talking to middle school students whose strengths and interests might yet change before they reach adulthood. “You don’t want to pigeonhole them,” she said.
In the second year of the program, Hayesville has begun to expand its outreach to local schools like Tri-County Community College and employers to invite them to the school to do lunch-and-learn sessions, or to set up field trips, for example, for students interested in welding, auto mechanics or health sciences, McCoy said.
When 8th graders are looking at registration for 9th grade, educators at the middle school work closely with Hayesville High School to ensure that a student who, say, might want to become a mechanic enrolls in basic classes and could potentially dual enroll at Tri-County Community College.
“We’re sending their portfolios so the high school knows their goals and can help the kids get there,” she said.
