“Is This Really for Me?”
Before a freshman chooses a pathway, joins a club, signs up for an elective, or begins imagining a future career, they are often trying to answer a much more immediate question:
“Is this really for me?”
During the first few weeks of school, leaders are focused on schedules, staffing, attendance, enrollment, and getting the year moving. Meanwhile, students are conducting an assessment of their own:
Who knows me? Where do I fit? What could I be good at here? Is there something—or someone—here for me?
Students are deciding whether they belong.
For schools strengthening Career Academies, CTE pathways, or college-and-career systems, that matters. Pathway development and belonging cannot be treated as separate conversations. Before students can confidently ask, “Which pathway should I choose?” they may first need evidence that there is a place for them within the school.
The first 30 days offer an incredible opportunity to provide that evidence by connecting freshmen to the people, programs, student leaders, clubs, traditions, and possibilities already surrounding them.
6 Places to Start
1. Look at School Through the Eyes of a Freshman
Who greets them? Who checks on them? Who helps them understand the unwritten rules of high school? And after orientation is over, who continues to notice them?
Orientation and freshman academies can create a strong beginning, but belonging has to continue beyond week one. Upperclassmen, mentors, pathway ambassadors, athletes, club members, and other student leaders still remember what it felt like to be new. Give them an intentional role in making that experience better for someone else.
2. Expand Who You Consider a Student Leader
Leadership exists far beyond student government, NHS, team captains, and students who already hold a title.
Ask instead: Where are students already influencing other students?
Look in classrooms, clubs, athletics, performing arts, pathway programs, gaming groups, service organizations—and even the lunch table everyone seems to gather around.
Those students are already shaping your culture. The opportunity is to help them recognize that influence and intentionally use it to strengthen the experience of others.
3. Give Clubs a Bigger Mission
Most schools already have an incredible network of student groups. What if each one began the year by asking:
“How can we help another group strengthen its mission? Who can we connect with?”
Partner with a freshman group. Join forces with a career pathway. Lead a service project together. Invite students who haven’t found their place yet.
A club becomes more than an activity when its members begin seeing themselves as contributors to the culture of the entire school.
4. Let Students Tell the Story
A webpage can explain what a pathway offers. A student can explain what it feels like to belong to it.
During exploratory conversations with students recently, I heard incredible stories from young people who had found purpose and direction through their pathway experiences—and are now being recognized nationally for their work.
Ask students: What surprised you? What did you discover about yourself? What opportunities opened because you said yes?
Sometimes the most powerful pathway message a freshman can hear isn’t a list of courses or credentials. It’s an older student saying:
“I didn’t have it figured out either. Now I’m excited to be here.”
5. Make Career Readiness Bigger Than Choosing a Career
Most ninth graders don’t know exactly what they want to do yet—and they shouldn’t have to.
Career readiness is also learning to communicate, collaborate, problem-solve, adapt, lead, take responsibility, and work alongside people who are different from you.
Those skills are already being developed throughout your building: in classrooms, clubs, sports, jobs, mentoring relationships, performances, service projects, and pathway experiences.
Make that growth visible. Help students recognize that career readiness isn’t only about choosing what they want to become. It’s also about recognizing who they are becoming along the way.
6. Notice Who Hasn’t Connected Yet
Some students will find their place quickly. Others won’t. Sometimes, they simply need an invitation. One of your most powerful resources for extending that invitation is already walking your hallways: your students themselves.
Students influence whether another student feels welcomed, whether joining something new feels safe, whether a freshman feels noticed, and whether someone begins to imagine themselves in a space they hadn’t considered before.
That influence is already happening. The question is whether we leave it to chance—or intentionally develop it.
When students feel connected, they become more willing to explore, take risks, discover their strengths, and imagine who they could become.
And that may be where the strongest career pathways actually begin.