This week: student-centered planning, making requirements work harder, a district-wide success story—and more.
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A Career Choices Series Newsletter
September 1, 2026 ~ Issue 26.2
FROM MINDY'S DESK
The Best School Plans Start With the Student
High schools are balancing more new and evolving priorities than ever: increased graduation requirements, career readiness, financial literacy, college access, CTE pathways, early college opportunities, and more. It's easy for each new initiative to become an entirely new program, course, or checklist to be completed.
Here's the thing: students shouldn't experience high school as a series of disparate initiatives. The high school experience should be a journey of growth toward a future that may still be fuzzy, but that each student is learning to clarify.
That's why we believe the strongest school plans start with the student and work backward. That focus on "what's best for students" has been at the heart of our approach since our award-winning curriculum launched in 1990.
Even when they can't yet articulate it, students are pondering important questions: What kind of life do I want? What kind of career could support that life? What education or training will that career require? And what can I do during high school to prepare for those next steps?
When schools connect those questions to the courses and opportunities already available, individual programs become more meaningful—and students begin to see how the pieces of their education fit together.
The goal isn't simply high school graduation. It's to help students understand where they're going next—and help them build the skills they need to succeed there.
Let's continue the conversation and share more ideas and perspectives on helping students plan for their future.
FUTURE FOCUSED
Shift Your Thinking from Requirements to Opportunities
New graduation requirements can sometimes feel like one more thing being squeezed into an already crowded school schedule.
But what if a course could do more—meet the requirements and then some?
California's new Personal Finance requirement is just such an opportunity. It requires students to learn essential financial skills, but a well-designed Personal Finance experience can serve more than that one purpose. It can meet the AB 2927 mandate while advancing broader goals for college and career readiness, student engagement, A–G completion, and postsecondary planning.
For administrators, this presents an important planning question:
How can this new course requirement bring more relevance and reality to financial literacy? What if it could also help students explore careers, consider the education and training those careers require, and understand how the choices they make about money and education today can affect the life they want tomorrow?
Looking for ideas and strategies for doing more with your Personal Finance course? Reach out to Dr. Monica Carmo, Vice President of Educational Partnerships.
IN PRACTICE
One District, Five High Schools, One Commitment to Student Futures
What does it look like when career and life planning becomes a core piece of a district's culture—not simply another program students encounter along the way?
For Nevada Joint Union High School District (NJUHSD) in Grass Valley, California, the answer looks a little different at each of its five high schools, but the goal is the same: help every student develop a clearer sense of who they are, where they want to go, and how they can get there.
The district was intentional in the design of its Career Choices course, using Career Choices and Changes and My10yearPlan.com® to give students a structured opportunity to build self-awareness, investigate careers of interest, and turn their dreams into goals and their goals into actionable plans. While the two comprehensive high schools may implement the course somewhat differently than the district's alternative, independent study, and early college campuses, each school uses it to strengthen college and career readiness and support transitions into CTE pathways.
What stands out isn't simply that NJUHSD uses the same curriculum across multiple schools; it's how the curriculum becomes part of each school's approach to helping students develop personalized plans for life after high school.
Teachers describe students making connections between classroom learning, financial planning, career pathways, personal values, and their long-term goals. And because the program is integrated into the school experience, students across different academic tracks have the opportunity to engage in that planning.
The result is a district-wide approach that doesn't ask students to wait until senior year to think about what's next. They're building their plans—and revisiting and polishing them—as they move through high school.
ON THE ROAD
Come Say Hello!
We’re looking forward to connecting with educators and industry leaders at these upcoming conferences.
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
Ask this at your next planning meeting:
"Where do our students connect what they want to do with what they need to do next?"
If the answer isn't immediately obvious, it may be worth looking at how your existing courses, programs, and student-planning activities could connect more intentionally.
Sometimes the opportunity isn't in adding something new; it's in making stronger connections through what you're already doing.
