Quakertown Community School District is a diverse suburban district of 5,000 students 40 miles north of Philadelphia.
“We find that many generations of families have gone through our district,” says Superintendent Matthew Friedman. “As a long-time professional in education, that’s always a good sign that people like the school system. When I arrived, I listened to all the internal and external stakeholders to learn the strengths, the pain points, where we needed to grow. What I really wanted to focus on was life beyond the walls of the schools.”
For Friedman, who was recently recognized with an Innovative Leader Award at the Northeast Pre-NYSCATE Summit in Verona, NY, there was one important question to answer: What are kids going to do when they graduate?
“We have a mix of white-collar and blue-collar families and a separate technical high school with about 1,000 kids that feed in from three different districts,” he says. “A lot of our kids go into trades. We support two-year paths, four-year paths, trade school, workforce, military — all the different options. But we really had no dedicated exposure to STEM education at that elementary level.”
To start, Friedman helped design and implement an elementary computational thinking and design thinking course for K through 5.
“It gave the students an opportunity to be hands-on in their learning, to understand the computational thinking process and have exposure to STEM education at the younger level,” he says. “I always use the analogy from a leadership position of building a house. You can build the biggest house in the world, but if you don’t have a strong foundation that house is going to collapse.”
Friedman saw a lot of schools try to implement things from the top down. He wanted to try to do things from the bottom up, starting conversations in kindergarten to set kids up for success in high school by having K-8 CTE exposure. To do that, he wanted to have career conversations with a common career language K-12 and to take a dialogic approach using the RIASEC taxonomy of career interests.
Far from a one-off concept, RIASEC is now used by many universities such as U of Hawaii, Purdue, FSU, and Michigan State to help students determine prospective majors that speak to their true talents, interest and abilities.
“If you put in your RIASEC results, it will show you what majors align with your letters and what courses you could potentially take,” Friedman says. “It takes a lot of the guessing out and really helps to frame it for students.”
The 6 RIASEC Types to Guide Students
Friedman explains the RIASEC taxonomy:
- Realistic (The Doers): These people are often good at mechanical or athletic jobs (e.g., mechanics, engineers, farmers).
- Investigative (The Thinkers): These people like to watch, learn, analyze and solve problems (e.g., scientists, researchers, data analysts).
- Artistic (The Creators): These people like to work in unstructured situations where they can use their creativity (e.g., artists, musicians, writers, designers).
- Social (The Helpers): These people like to work with other people, rather than things (e.g., teachers, nurses, counselors).
- Enterprising (The Persuaders): These people like to work with others and enjoy persuading and performing.(e.g., managers, salespeople, entrepreneurs).
- Conventional (The Organizers): These people are very detail oriented, organized, and like to work with data (e.g., accountants, clerks, administrative assistants).
Some schools use simple questionnaires to ask students to consider their strengths, dislikes, talents and interests — making it clear there are no wrong answers, as seen here.
Deeper Conversations and Deeper Culture
Friedman has seen a positive change not only in the classroom but the greater school culture.
“We were talking about Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday coming up and instead of very low-level factual information, we can integrate career conversations such as, ‘What letters do you think Dr. King would be? What letters are you? Find two or three in the room to have a conversation. What are the similarities between you and Dr. King? What are the differences? Why do you think he would be these letters? Does that align with your strengths and your interests, could you do something similar to what Dr. King did one day?’ It takes the conversation to a whole other level,” Friedman says.
Friedman explains how a third-grade Veterans Day classroom conversation he overheard discussing RIASEC letters in regard to an Army Ranger visitor in the classroom might have affected a student’s career path.
“Students really have to understand all six letters in order to understand where they fit in the framework,” he says. “Their letters could change daily, weekly, yearly. The letters you have in kindergarten are probably not the letters you have in 7th or 12th grade. But if you continue to think about your strengths and your interests, teachers can flexibly group students in classrooms based off of their dominant letter.”
The success stories that are most satisfying to Friedman are those involving helping a student find their own right future path. For example, one strong student admitted he was considering dropping out of school because he didn’t see a fit with what was happening in the classroom. Now an engineering major at a top school, he shared that after being introduced to RIASEC and career conversations using a common language, he realized that his strengths and interests actually had a pathway beyond K-12.
From a leadership perspective, Friedman always wants growth and achievement from his students. A common language is changing the culture of the program.
“We’ve had the kids say, ‘I’m having conversations with people I never thought I would talk to in school,’” he says. “That’s so great. It shifts the paradigm.”
The use of RIASEC also helped in a recent career and jobs fair.
“We’ve created different types of pathways students can take,” Friedman says. “They can take courses and get externships and job shadows and internships throughout high school with local businesses. Integrating Riasec into their decision-making process was invaluable at a recent college and career fair in our high school. We had 96 colleges, universities, businesses, military and trades. Six weeks before the fair, our college and career counselor contacted all 96 attendees. ‘This is the Riasec framework. We want you to list your top 10 majors or job roles with appropriate letters.’”
When students arrived at the fair, rather than wandering aimlessly, they could instantly target the best fit and have productive conversations about their future.
“It’s just such a helpful tool, at any age,” Friedman says. “When we introduced this to parents, a number of adults came up to me afterward and said, ‘I might rethink where I am in my life and my career.’”
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