Lessons in Adolescence

Lessons on Reimagining Career Education with Jean Eddy

• Youth-Nex: Remaking Middle School • Season 4 • Episode 40

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This episode features a conversation with Jean Eddy, CEO and President of American Student Assistance®. ASA is a national nonprofit changing the way kids learn about careers and prepare for their futures through equitable access to career readiness information and experiences. ASA helps middle and high school students to know themselves—their strengths and their interests—and understand their education and career options so that they can make informed decisions. The organization fulfills its mission – in schools and beyond the classroom—by providing free digital experiences directly to millions of students, and through advocacy, impact investing, thought leadership, and philanthropic support for educators, intermediaries, and others. ASA fosters a generation of confident, crisis-proof young people who are ready for whatever path comes next after high school.

Jean is also the author of the new book, Crisis-Proofing Today’s Learners: Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow's World. It’s a post-pandemic take on teaching and learning, advocating for approaches that build adaptive skills from a broader array of educational choices.

In part one, Jean and Jason talk about how the current world in which youth are living influenced her thinking and reasons for writing the book, the people and partners she relied upon to share knowledge on what’s effective in career education for adolescents, the importance of helping young people develop the skill of adaptability given the ever-changing world and marketplace of careers, examples from around the world where education is centered on self-discovery, and what employers, educators, parents can do to help young people develop their own pathways to career.

In part two they talk about how to ensure the time young people are already dedicating to the digital space is maximized for their long-term benefit, the interest in skills-based hiring among employers, the interest among Gen Z youth in pathways to employment outside the typical higher education experience, and the challenges for both of them to make alternative pathways more mainstream. They look at where career education fits within the school day, what ASA is doing to directly help young people gain skills and experiences to identify and forge their pathways, and to influence systems across the country that can better institutionalize career education for all young people, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds and with special needs.

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