“I want this to be my job.”

Caroline Baker was moving through the stations at Chowan Middle School’s Earth Walk (Edenton-Chowan Schools, NC) when she heard the sixth grader’s comment. As a Global Leaders strategy coach, Baker works with the district through their partnership with Participate Learning to build career readiness and global learning in everyday school life. 

All ten stations were staffed by professionals whose work touches earth and environmental science in northeastern North Carolina. The comment landed differently with Baker than the enthusiasm she had seen at other events. 

“They see themselves in this career,” Baker said, “because it’s not just learning about careers in Raleigh or Charlotte. They see what’s possible in Edenton, and how those jobs are making the world a better place.”

What it takes for a career to feel possible

Career exploration is built on a simple premise: students can’t want what they’ve never seen. The goal is breadth—introduce enough possibilities, and something will catch. 

What’s harder to engineer is recognition. A student can learn about a profession and still file it under “not for me,” but for someone else, somewhere else. 

Chowan Middle School runs quarterly STEM days that connect classroom instruction, career exploration, and community partners around industries specific to the region, like agriculture, wind energy, aerospace, and maritime science. 

The Earth Walk, held around Earth Day, was the fourth-quarter STEM day for sixth graders. The professionals at each of the ten stations were from the surrounding area, representing the NC Cooperative Extension, NC Wildlife Resources Commission, Beekeepers of Chowan County, NC Forest Service, and Washington County Soil and Water Conservation.

Students moved through each station with a guiding frame: how does this work connect to what you’ve studied in class, and how does it address protecting land ecosystems?

One global challenge, a different local career at every station

Protecting land ecosystems is one of the global challenges in Participate Learning’s Blueprint for a Better World, a framework that organizes learning around real-world problems under three themes: protecting the planet, caring for the people, and building for the future.

The Blueprint wasn’t the day’s primary focus, but Baker recognized the alignment as soon as she arrived. The NC Forest Service professional was doing work that directly addresses land conservation. The beekeepers were supporting pollinator health. The soil and water conservation team was managing the land students drive past on the way to school.

The community’s professionals gave a global issue a local face, bringing it close enough that a student could hear about a career and think, “That’s something I could actually do here one day.”

Career skills showed up before students knew to name them

Baker walked through every station with a student group. Curiosity showed up in the genuine, specific questions students asked. Critical thinking emerged as students began considering what action on these issues might look like in their own lives. Communication appeared as students built on what they’d heard at one station to ask sharper questions at the next.

“The global competencies were in full action,” Baker said. Those competencies are the curiosity, critical thinking, and communication skills Global Leaders is designed to build across every school day.

Students left Earth Walk able to name specific careers in their own community that protect land ecosystems and to explain how each one matters, because they’d reasoned their way there, station by station.

What this can look like at the district level

Edenton-Chowan is expanding Global Leaders into its two elementary schools, White Oak and D.F. Walker, making it the first district in the Participate Learning network to offer the program at every school: 2 elementary, 1 middle, 1 high. The goal is a K-12 pathway where students build the same language foundation and vocabulary from their first year in the district through graduation, rather than starting over at each transition. For district leaders, it’s a model for what full-scale adoption looks like, a coordinated path built into the whole system.

Making intentional career connections

The Earth Walk gave students a look at what’s possible in a place they already know, and what protecting that place actually requires.

For districts working to connect career exploration and global learning across every school and grade level, Global Leaders offers a structure for making that connection intentional and interwoven into the regular school day.