Most high school students are not receiving the guidance needed to pursue educational or career paths that they are most interested in, according to a Gallup-led national survey and reported in Education Week.
Most of the 1,300-plus 16- to 18-year-old high school students questioned say they don’t feel prepared to take the next step and 47% of parents surveyed do not frequently discussing post-graduation plans with their child.
If parental guidance on pivotal decisions such as what comes after high school is MIA, important life skills at home go untapped. This can include minor tasks like addressing an envelope or changing a flat tire, or serious subjects such as banking, job searches, insurance and taxes. Most high schools do not cover these subjects.
One longtime educator is of a mind to change this lack of post-high school preparation in her Michigan district. Betsy Springer, a teacher and instructional coach at Gull Lake Partnership—a public, virtual school in Richland, Mich.—experienced a “aha” moment a decade ago when she read a Facebook post that highlighted the “10 things I wished I learned in school.” This discovery led her to develop Adulting 101 and, later, Adulting 102 as electives for her district’s high school students.
Education Week interviewed Springer about her adulting classes. The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
What topics do Adulting 101 and 102 cover?
The two classes each cover a set of different topics related to independent living and can be taken without prerequisites in any order.
The course outline for Adulting 101 includes going to college and other pathways; getting a job; banking; budgeting; doing taxes; housing; home maintenance and safety; health, nutrition and cooking; insurance; voting and community involvement; digital citizenship; and personal relationships and conflict. Adulting 102 covers travel, doing laundry, personal and mental health, tech or digital health, personal budgeting, time management, and goal setting.
Where does content for these classes come from?
Our district places a huge emphasis on connecting students with community leaders, so my original vision was to bring in local experts from various fields to share their expertise with students. For example, my father is an automotive engineer. I had him talk to students about basic car maintenance. A school employee who also worked at a bank has covered banking basics with students. One of our students’ mothers is a realtor, so I had her come in and talk to students about buying a house versus renting a house.
Other sources you draw from?
I use a lot of online resources. I’ve introduced students to an online financial calculator, for example. I use a lot of YouTube videos. But I continue to rely on expertise from local industry experts, too.
How do you structure the class?
Students are expected to be able to master 20 activities related to independent living, like preparing for a job interview or understanding the differences between renting and buying a home. I use a lot of formative assessments, including quizzes and projects, to test their knowledge.
What kind of feedback do students give?
I’ve had some students come back to me after I’ve helped them practice for a job interview and say it helped them to feel less nervous during the actual interview. After doing a lesson on how to do a home safety audit, I had a lot of students tell me their smoke detector batteries were dead.
Have students shared their favorite ‘adulting’ topics?
Yes, I have asked them to share that. The two most popular topics, for whatever reason, were “how to tie a tie” and “how to plunge a toilet.”
How do parents feel about these classes?
Some say it’s great for teenagers to hear some of these lessons from someone else other than Mom and Dad. So it’s maybe not that parents aren’t covering these things, like the importance of budgeting, but it helps for this information to be reinforced by an adult other than a parent.
Has the ‘adulting’ material you teach changed over the years?
One thing I’ve rethought is the assumption that every student’s going to college in the traditional manner, like I did. A lot of our students that are going to be college-bound start college before they’re out of high school, so they might be entering college as a sophomore or a junior. Even if they’re not in the early college program, they might, through dual enrollment, have a lot of college credits. There are also a lot of students who are going to delay going to college or may choose to pursue a trade. So over the years, I’ve learned that post-high school pathways are a much broader and more personalized topic than just the standard answer.
How optimistic are you that high school students today, in general, are ready to become adults?
I’m optimistic. I think they have all the capabilities. I think what they need most is adults around them who say to them: “You can do it, you can figure it out.”
Education Week
