How to connect high school education to the job market: a teacher’s perspective
Last spring, I sat across from Maria Henderson in my cramped high school conference room, the clock ticking past 6:30, my third coffee of the day gone cold. Her 10th grade son Javi sat slouched next to her, picking at a loose thread on his hoodie. “He gets Bs in all his required classes, but he’s stopped trying in his AP classes,” Maria said, leaning forward. “All he talks about is helping his uncle build decks on the weekends. I keep telling him you need a four-year business degree to get a good job, but he just checks out now. What do we do?”
I’d been scheduled to chaperone the district career fair a month later, and Javi signed up last minute, mostly to get out of a Friday afternoon study hall. When I walked the gym floor, I found him leaning against a booth owned by a local residential construction company, talking animatedly to the owner, a guy named Ray who had a scuffed tool belt hooked over the side of the table. Ray said he couldn’t hire enough qualified people — he’d had three openings for apprentice carpenters for six months, and only two applicants showed up that actually knew how to read a basic tape measure correctly. Starting pay was $22 an hour, full health insurance, and the company paid for the required training to get a state license. Javi left with Ray’s cell number and a flier for the district’s career and technical education (CTE) carpentry program that starts junior year.
I’ve been teaching tech ed at this high school for 12 years, and I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times. Most parents grew up with a clear script: finish high school, go to four-year college, get a good office job. That script worked for a lot of people 30 years ago, but it doesn’t line up with what the job market looks like now. The problem isn’t that kids don’t want to work — it’s that we’re not connecting what they learn in school to the actual jobs that are available, and we’re pushing all kids down the same path regardless of what they like or what they’re good at.
I don’t tell parents to rewrite their kid’s entire future overnight. There are small, low-effort changes anyone can make that help align education with what the job market actually needs, right now.
First, change the question you ask. Instead of asking “what do you want to be when you grow up?” which is huge and overwhelming for a 15-year-old, ask “what’s your favorite part of the week when you don’t have to be at school?” When Javi answered that, he said he liked figuring out why a wall isn’t level, and finishing a project that people can use every day. He hated sitting at a desk writing research papers that didn’t matter to him. That answer tells you way more than any online career quiz, and it helps you both see what kinds of work would fit them, not just what sounds impressive to relatives.
Second, take one low-effort trip a year to something that lets them see jobs up close. It doesn’t have to be a formal week-long shadowing program that requires months of coordination. If your kid likes baking, stop by a local bakery on a slow Tuesday afternoon and ask if you can chat with the owner for 10 minutes after school. If your kid likes fixing bikes, go to the local shop and let them ask questions while you get your tire changed. I’ve had parents tell me this takes too much time, but it’s 90 minutes out of your year, and it gives your kid a real picture of what a job is actually like, not what they see on social media or TV.
Third, let them test a path before they commit. Javi didn’t have to skip college entirely to do the carpentry program. He still took all the core classes he needs to get into a four-year construction management program in five years if he decides he wants to move into project management. The CTE class counts for his graduation credit, it’s free, and it gives him hands-on experience before he spends tens of thousands of dollars on a degree. I had a student a few years ago whose parents pushed her into pre-med straight out of high school, even though she kept saying she liked organizing student events and writing for the school paper. She graduated with $35,000 in debt, quit her first medical assistant job after six months, and went back to school for marketing. If she’d gotten to test a marketing internship or even a one-semester business class in high school, she could have saved herself two years and tens of thousands in student loans.
Last week, Maria came back to pick up Javi’s diploma, and she pulled me aside to talk. She said she was terrified when he told her he wanted to do the apprenticeship instead of applying to four-year schools right after graduation. She thought he was giving up, that he’d regret it later. Now he starts work at 7 a.m. every day, and he comes home tired but talking about the new subdivision house he’s working on, how he got to frame the entire second floor on his own last week. He’s already saving for a down payment on a small lot outside of town.
I still have parents tell me that this is settling, that their kid is too smart for a trade or a community college path. What I tell them is that smart doesn’t mean one type of job. The job market needs teachers and doctors and engineers, it also needs carpenters and electricians and plumbers and dental hygienists and graphic designers who build experience early. There’s no one right path. Javi’s path isn’t for every kid, but it’s the right path for him right now. No one knows what’ll happen in 10 years — he might decide to go back to school, he might start his own construction company, he might switch to something else entirely. But right now he’s engaged, he’s learning, and he’s earning a good living without thousands of dollars of student debt hanging over his head. That’s a pretty good start, as far as I’m concerned.
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