This week: keeping students at the center in the age of AI, Hidden Figures meets your Career Choices classroom—and more.
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A Career Choices Series Newsletter
September 22, 2026 ~ Issue 26.5
FROM MINDY'S DESK
What Happens When Students Stop Doing the Thinking? The Antidote to Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence can write the essay. Solve the math problem. Create the résumé. Research the career. It can even generate a perfectly respectable 10-year plan.
But should it?
The real educational value isn't in the polished essay, correct answer, or finished plan. It's the thinking required to produce them and the learning that happens along the way.
That's why the Career Choices series and Lifestyle Math deliberately combine handwritten work with technology. Students first wrestle with important questions in their workbooks—about their goals, values, careers, education, and finances. Only after their own thinking is recorded on the page do they move online to rethink, refine, and synthesize their ideas and choices into their account on My10YearPlan.com or the Online Correction Tool.
Technology isn't eliminated. It's leveraged to support learning.
For two decades, we’ve called this process “Think/Rethink.”
Students think for themselves as they respond to personalized questions in their workbook.
Students rethink as they reflect and polish their thinking with the help of technology.
Share the essay below before your next staff meeting and use it to spark discussion about keeping students at the center in the age of AI.
WHAT WE'RE WATCHING
Video Book Club Presents: Hidden Figures (2017)
Sometimes, students need to see career development and the realities of life in action. That’s the idea behind our Video Book Club, a section in the Instructor’s Guide (pages 11/23–11/26) where we recommend films you can share with students to spark deeper conversations about the choices, challenges, and opportunities that shape a person’s future.
One great addition to your classroom watchlist? Hidden Figures.
Based on a true story, this film follows three Black women whose mathematics, computing, and engineering work played important roles in NASA’s early space program in the 1960s. The real-life success of these women included remarkable achievements: Katherine Johnson calculated and verified flight trajectories, Dorothy Vaughan became NASA’s first Black manager, and Mary Jackson became NASA’s first Black female engineer.
For freshmen, the value of this film goes beyond the history lesson.
Throughout the story, students watch as people recognize their strengths, advocate for themselves, continue learning, adapt as technology changes, and chase opportunities that aren’t always easy.
Those themes fit naturally into the career and life-planning conversations happening throughout the Career Choices series, providing an opportunity to move the discussion beyond “what career sounds interesting?” and toward bigger questions, like:
What are my strengths?
What might I have to learn to reach my goals?
What do I do when the path I want isn’t the easiest one?
Hidden Figures can be divided across several class sessions and paired with reflection or discussion activities.
Career exploration doesn’t always have to start with a worksheet. Sometimes, it starts with a great story.
WHO DO YOU KNOW?
Know a Great Educational Sales Rep?
You know the kind—the representative whose call you actually take. They understand education, know their products, follow through, and care about helping schools succeed.
We'd like to know them, too.
Academic Innovations is expanding our national network of Independent Educational Sales Representatives. If someone you've worked with comes to mind, please forward this newsletter and encourage them to explore the opportunity.
ON THE ROAD
Out and About
Conference season is taking us all over the map. We’re excited to connect with educators and industry leaders at these upcoming events.
Jump$tart National Educators Conference
Denver, CO • Nov. 6–8
CTE Conference
Rancho Mirage, CA • Nov. 18–20
ACTE CareerTech Vision 2026
New Orleans, LA • Dec. 2–5
THIS WEEK'S TAKEAWAY
Freshmen don’t need to have their futures figured out—they just need to start thinking about them.
Career Choices and Changes gives them the tools, time, and experience to think for themselves, discover what’s possible, and begin shaping what’s next.
