Jennifer Kerbrat, Career Development Facilitator at Novi Middle School, has built a full-year rhythm for career exploration using Pathful. From Career Development Month to spring planning, her students engage with job-shadow videos, VR experiences, and cluster-based activities that connect directly to their classroom learning.

“We use the job-shadow videos for Career Conversations during November (Career Development Month), where our WNMS TV News crew (8th grade) creates a lead-in about the career, shows a video, and then uses the career-profile information to share stats on the career. This goes out to all of the students at our middle school.”

Students also dive into Pathful’s resources during quarterly Virtual Reality Career Fairs in STEM classes.

“The students search up the VR Developer career profile, watch the video, and take the Career Check quiz afterward. They do this while waiting their turn with the VR headsets so that they have a better understanding of how the headsets work.”

In the spring, Pathful becomes a bridge between tools:

“We use the Clusters for them to find a video to watch after they have completed their career-planning activities. This way they can watch the job-shadow videos that correspond to the cluster they chose. We call this a virtual career fair.”

To make the lessons easy for colleagues to use, Jennifer added simple, ready-to-go materials like a crossword puzzle and printable Career Check questions. Many of these can even be incorporated into a single FlexLesson, giving educators one place to share the activities and review student responses.

Why it works

By integrating Pathful throughout the year — both across and in conjunction with other platforms — Jennifer creates a sustained, student-driven exploration process. Students see career connections from multiple angles (media, VR, and self-assessment), leading to greater engagement and clearer preferences.

How to try it

• Pair Pathful’s job-shadow videos with student-created media projects or announcements.
• Use videos and Career Check quizzes as structured waiting-turn activities during hands-on class experiences.
• Connect Pathful’s Career Clusters to Xello or other EDP tools for spring reflection and alignment.
• Add simple tangibles like puzzles or printouts, or build everything into a single FlexLesson to make it easy to share and track student work.
• Follow Jennifer's advice: "Play in Pathful yourself. Click on all of the tabs, take the quizzes, watch a variety of videos, and then think like a student — what would they like from this program?"

🤝 Want to help fellow educators? Share your go-to Pathful strategy for a chance to be featured in Pathful in Practice. Email impact@pathful.com.

Sam Spiegel

Sam Spiegel is a Growth Marketing Specialist for Pathful and a BCLAD-certified educator with a Master's in Education from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a former elementary school teacher, Sam is now a dedicated and results-oriented EdTech specialist, enjoying the intersection of his passion for education and technology.