One of the toughest questions educators face is when to ask students to start thinking seriously about their futures. Too early, and it can feel premature. Too late, and students may miss critical opportunities to explore and prepare.
At Waukee Community School District in Iowa, educators are challenging the idea that career planning should wait until high school. They’ve embraced a powerful shift: introducing Career and Technical Education (CTE) as early as middle school and combining it with comprehensive tools like Kuder Navigator.
The result? Students like Avery are discovering their interests, developing real-world skills, and confidently navigating their way toward meaningful careers before they’ve even entered 9th grade.
Across the country, thousands of students miss out on the full value of CTE, not because they aren’t interested, but because they don’t know it exists early enough to benefit from it.
CTE programs offer hands-on learning, industry certifications, and real preparation for college and careers. But in many districts, students only hear about these opportunities once they’ve already selected high school courses or are midway through high school. By then, it’s often too late to complete a full program of study or take advantage of certifications and dual credit options.
At Waukee, district leaders saw this disconnect and acted early. They recognized a critical window in middle school, particularly 7th and 8th grade, as the right time to help students begin thinking about their interests and future careers. Rather than waiting for high school, they embedded career planning into middle school curriculum and used data-driven platforms to personalize the experience for each student.
The goal: close the readiness gap by aligning students’ interests with available CTE programs before students choose electives or create their high school schedules.
Early career exploration isn’t about boxing students into a single path. It’s about planting seeds and sparking curiosity, giving students the language to describe their interests, and showing them that those interests can lead to real opportunities.
That’s exactly what happened for Avery when she was an 8th-grade student in the Waukee Community School District.
Avery was always drawn to helping others. Whether it was caring for a sibling, supporting friends, or volunteering in class, she naturally gravitated toward service. But like many students her age, she had no idea how that translated into a future career. The idea of college or a job still felt distant.
That changed when Avery’s school introduced Kuder Navigator, a research-based career planning platform that helps students explore interests, identify potential careers, and build an educational plan. As part of Waukee’s district-wide effort, all 8th graders completed the Kuder Career Interests Assessment®, which maps personal interests to career clusters.
Avery’s results pointed strongly toward the Health Science career cluster. Using Pathways Link, a feature within Kuder Navigator, her results were matched to three specific CTE programs available within the district. One pathway immediately stood out: Therapeutics, which included the Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) course.
More than just a suggestion, Pathways Link laid out a roadmap:
“I always liked helping people,” Avery said. “But when I saw an actual plan and real classes I could take, it made it all feel real.”
Leveraging Navigator, Avery could see a future that felt relevant and achievable.
College and career readiness is too often defined by standardized tests or GPAs. But for students like Avery, readiness is measured in confidence, competence, and credentials.
Thanks to early exposure to CTE and the guided planning provided by Kuder Navigator, Avery made the most of her high school experience. She wasn’t just checking boxes for graduation, she was building a career foundation.
By high school graduation, Avery had:
Avery’s story isn’t an outlier, it’s an example of what’s possible when students are given structured pathways, early planning tools, and personal support.
And it all started with a career assessment in middle school.
What Waukee Community School District implemented wasn’t just a career day or a one-off career interest survey. It was a comprehensive, scalable system built around four key pillars:
These elements together produce students who are not only more prepared, but also more motivated, more likely to graduate, and more confident entering the workforce or college.
Building an early CTE strategy doesn’t require reinventing your school system, it just requires intention and the right tools.
Educators and administrators can start by embedding career planning into the natural flow of middle school learning. Integrate assessments, expose students to multiple career clusters, and make sure every student sees how their personal interests connect to tangible programs.
To support more students like Avery:
Avery’s journey from an unsure middle schooler to a certified CNA with a college plan shows what’s possible when students are empowered early. Through the combined strength of CTE programming and tools like Kuder Navigator, she found purpose, built skills, and graduated ready to take the next step with confidence.
Her story is not just a personal win, it’s a model that districts across the country can replicate.
When schools invest in career exploration early and connect it to real-world learning, they don’t just prepare students for graduation. They launch futures.
Want to see how tools like Kuder Navigator can support your district’s CTE goals?
Let’s talk about how to bring early career planning to your students, starting now.
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