From Timely to Timeless: Building Coherence in the Career Pathways Movement

by Laura Tavares and Carrie Wihbey

Last week’s New Pathways Boston convening was filled with energy, inspiration, and insights that helped us situate our work at WPS within a larger national movement. Hosted by Getting Smart and American Student Assistance (ASA), the event brought together educators, funders, policymakers, and students to explore how Boston schools, employers, and community organizations are connecting learning to life by building new pathways between K–12, careers, and purpose-driven futures for all young people.

This work is a critical piece of what it means to educate young people today. In her opening keynote, ASA CEO Julie Lammers shared some powerful statistics: 79% of high school students would like to participate in work-based learning, but only 34% were aware of such opportunities for students of their age, and only 2% completed an internship during high school. She noted that public opinion is shifting as well. In national surveys on the purpose of education, “preparing for a career” has climbed from 27th to 6th place, while “preparing to enroll in college” has fallen to 47th of 57 priorities. The data signal a growing desire for education that feels practical, relevant, and connected to life after graduation.

In Boston, this momentum is reinforced by the Boston Foundation’s leadership in expanding career pathways and work-based learning for the city’s youth. The conference theme, Pathways Aren’t Paved, reminded us that there’s no single or predetermined route toward this vision. Across schools and communities, we’re co-creating the path as we go, learning alongside students, partners, and colleagues about what it takes to make relevance the rule rather than the exception.

What’s New, and What’s Enduring

Boston’s growing commitment to diverse pathways for high schoolers mirrors national momentum toward integrating career and community experiences into the fabric of schools. We left inspired by what’s genuinely new in the field:

ASA’s commitment to expanding opportunity in the middle grades stood out, particularly given how few funders invest in this critical developmental stage. At WPS, our partnerships with districts like Salem, Peabody, and Boston have shown that the middle years are when agency, curiosity, and purpose can either ignite, or fade away.

We were also impressed by the new ASA Center for Career Navigation at Jobs For the Future, which is closing access gaps by providing tools that parents, students, and educators can use to explore opportunities and make informed decisions. And we were moved by powerful storytelling, especially Multiple Choice, the new film from What School Could Be, which centers student voice and reminds us that the most compelling evidence of transformation is how young people talk about their own learning.

Amid all the innovation, we were reminded of what endures. “Career-connected learning” may sound new, but its strongest ideas are as old as learning itself. For most of human history, young people learned through doing: by working alongside adults, mastering real skills, and contributing to their communities. The industrial-era classroom - standardized, age-graded, and detached from real life - was the anomaly. The current movement is, in many ways, a return to what has always made learning powerful: relevance, relationship, and rigor in pursuit of something that matters.

Relevance, Relationships and Rigor in Action

We saw those timeless principles of relevance, relationships, and rigor brought vividly to life throughout the convening. At a site visit to Boston Arts Academy, we noticed how the school’s four arts “majors” link directly to creative professions and offer students genuine choice, authentic contexts for skill development, and real-world contexts - from school musical productions to work-based learning in Boston’s professional theaters - to demonstrate their learning. 

We saw these principles again during our Community-Connected Learning panel, which featured WPS alongside EL Education and CommunityShare. Together, we explored how authentic, community-rooted experiences help young people discover interests, cultivate social capital, and build networks - assets which will be increasingly important in the age of AI. For WPS, those ideas come alive in programs such as our Summer Leadership Institute offered in partnership with 3 area Boys & Girls Clubs.  High school students experience open-walled learning across 11 sites that connect curiosity to purpose: at Boston Children’s Hospital, they take on clinical roles in high-fidelity simulations; at Eastie Farm, they explore food justice in a geothermally powered greenhouse; at Wentworth Institute of Technology, they prototype with design mentors; and at Babson College, they pitch community impact projects, from student-led career networking events to sustainable fashion design. Learning feels alive: hands-on, connected to place, and rooted in agency.

Clockwise from top left: High school students in the Waltham, Watertown, and Newton Summer Leadership Institute engage in hands-on, career-connected experiences at Wentworth Institute of Technology, the ICA Watershed, Waltham Land Trust, Boston Children’s Hospital, Eastie Farm, and The Foundry at Babson College.

And we heard the principles echoed in the Middle Grades panel, where speakers emphasized that adolescence is a prime time for developing identity and purpose. Lavonia Montoute of EdVestors spoke about helping young people, especially students of color, “uplift what they already know about themselves.” Kate Parsons of CAPS described authentic learning where students tackle real industry challenges. Sarah Kittle of One Bead shared how paying guest speakers and featuring BPS alumni engages a representative body of speakers who can make career exploration personal for young people. And Michelle Rudy of Cultivate Pathways highlighted bilingual, work-based learning in Lynn that gives multilingual learners hands-on experience and confidence. Together, they showed how purpose grows when learning starts with identity and belonging.

Teen brains are tuned to belonging, contribution, and recognition; they thrive when adults offer both high expectations and high support. Middle school, then, is the ideal moment to help students explore their interests and develop durable skills such as collaboration, initiative, and self-direction. Authentic opportunities to contribute - through the kinds of community projects and design challenges WPS designs with our partners - lay the groundwork for the deeper technical and career preparation that follows in high school.

Why Coherence Matters

Innovation is exciting, but coherence is what makes it sustainable. Across the country, “career-connected learning” risks being seen by educators as yet another initiative to layer on top of existing work. What’s needed is a shared understanding that connects these efforts to the larger purpose of school: helping young people find meaning, motivation, and agency in their learning.

That’s where WPS situates our work. We partner closely with schools and communities, beginning by listening deeply to students and families as they share their experiences, values, and aspirations. From that foundation, we co-develop a shared vision of learning and work alongside educators to build the systems, capacities, and partnerships that make it real. Our approach blends research and design with hands-on implementation support. We help schools and districts launch innovative, learner-centered initiatives through program design, professional learning, partnership orchestration, and ongoing evaluation. 

Across settings, we design experiences that make relevance central, not peripheral. Whether it’s Try-It Days in Peabody, Design Studios in Salem, or Neighborhood Learning Immersions in Boston, each of these collaborations supports a broader goal that every educator can embrace: creating learning that is engaging, purposeful, and connected to the world beyond the classroom.

Yes, these projects help students identify interests, gain exposure to careers, and practice durable skills. But they also do more: they cultivate belonging, confidence, and motivation, the qualities that fuel academic success, lifelong learning and community engagement.

In other words, career-connected learning isn’t just a new direction; it’s a return to what we’ve always known about how young people learn best.

Clockwise from top left: Peabody's Higgins Middle School students film segments with the local Peabody TV crew during “Try It Day.” Salem's Collins Middle School students participate in learning immersions across the region — from the Massachusetts State House and UMass Lowell’s NERVE Robotics Center to the Boston Aquarium, Ipswich River Watershed Association, and The Ropes Garden in Salem.

A Shared Project

At New Pathways Boston, author Michael Horn reminded us that experience has become the expectation. The real work ahead is making those experiences coherent with the larger mission of schools, and ensuring that schools, out-of-school partners, and funders move in sync so relevance is built in, not added on.

That’s the work we’re committed to at WPS. Schools light the spark, community partners fan the flame, and together we create a developmental pathway where agency and purpose grow year by year.

The convening affirmed that we are part of something bigger. From ASA’s national leadership to Boston’s thriving ecosystem of innovative schools, there is a shared recognition that preparing young people for the future begins with helping them find purpose now.

And as the conference reminded us, pathways aren’t paved. They’re made through collaboration, courage, and a shared belief that every student deserves learning that feels both real and worth doing.