How HirePaths Enriched Our Learning Outside the Classroom

I’m Jennifer Kesler, and I teach second grade at Stockton Grade School in Stockton, Kansas. We are a small 1A rural school in north central Kansas. I was chosen to serve as a HirePaths Teacher Ambassador for the 2023-2024 academic year. I am excited to share how HirePaths inspired me as an educator as well as the students in my class.

Career Exploration in the Primary Grades

Many elementary teachers have one thing on their mind when they get a new class of students: relationships/social and emotional learning, reading and math. I was often that teacher too, until I came across HirePaths last summer while researching new things to explore for the upcoming school year. As I deepened my understanding of what HirePaths was and what it had to offer, I became intrigued. This looked like something that would challenge my thinking as a teacher. If we want all students to be college- and career-ready, we need to explore the world around us by exploring our passions and our communities. Why not use HirePaths to aid in teaching the standards? How could I use the resources from HirePaths to enrich learning beyond the classroom?

Exploring Agriculture with Kansas Corn STEM and Local Farms

In my first lesson plan, I created an agricultural lesson around growing corn and how farmers impact our lives. We used the free classroom kit from Kansas Corn STEM and learned about how corn grows and what jobs in agriculture look like (skills, strategies and education), plus we toured a local farm that grew corn. The students grew their own corn in class and monitored the changes and growth of the corn cycle. On our field trip to a local farm, the students were exposed to daily farm life. The farmers shared their education journey, skills and what we can all use from corn, and each student had the opportunity to ride in the combine and grain cart. Even though we happen to live in rural Kansas, many students still do not have the opportunity to explore a farm, let alone participate in a harvest.

Business Show and Tell

Using the Cool Careers videos helped students find out about careers of all kinds. At a young age, most of our students want to be doctors, nurses, teachers, pilots or lawyers. HirePaths is good for all ages because it highlights careers students may not know about or think about often. One of our class projects was to have a “Business Show and Tell.” Show and tell is enjoyable for all ages — even adults. This year we visited our local coffee shop and bakery, The Daily Grind, and we also visited Solutions North Bank. The students were able to ask questions, tour the facilities, and learn from professionals. One of my class’s favorite takeaways was hearing our baker say she gets up at 3:00 a.m. to make doughnuts for that morning! Also, those fractions and all those math operations, yes they are very important in this work! We also visited one of our local banks to learn about saving, spending and being a good consumer. I had visited with those at the bank to tell them that we were needing to hit some social studies standards, and what better way to do that by having our community help!

My Career Day

Our final career exploration was personalized for each student. As we explored careers and discussed careers in our local community, the students decided to interview someone in a career they are interested in. I reached out to community members with all kinds of career choices, including an artist, farmer, veterinarian, truck driver, librarian, scientist and a fence-building business. Each student was paired with a mentor to interview. The mentor also brought a hands-on activity for the students. The post activity included sharing with the class some new insight they learned from the mentor and any reflections they had made during or after the event.

All these activities are authentic and were inspired and supported by HirePaths. I hope this will give other teachers some ideas and activities they could do with their students this coming school year! My favorite resources were the Cool Careers videos and the Real Success Stories. My students were especially engaged by seeing other kids featured in the videos as hosts and interviewers.

Whatever the future might bring in your classroom, I hope that we can work together to connect students and families and widen viewpoints about 21st-century careers through HirePaths.

Jen Kesler was a 2023-2024 Dane G. Hansen Foundation HirePaths Teacher Ambassador. She teaches second grade at Stockton Grade School.