Setting Students Up for Career Success
Career counseling helps Maryland middle and high school students be proactive and prepared when it comes to their future careers—and the Maryland Workforce Association is a proud partner of this pivotal program.
What is the Career Counseling Program?
Established by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the Career Counseling Program provides Maryland middle and high school students with customized career counseling—also known as career coaching—services that guide them on their journey to choosing one or more post-college and career-readiness (post-CCR) pathways. Simply put, career counseling helps students in your community feel confident and ready to enter into the workforce.
Who Oversees the Career Counseling Program?
The Career Counseling Program is made possible through the administration and collaboration of Maryland’s local education agencies, local workforce development boards, and community colleges—but the partnership doesn’t stop there. Maryland-based businesses and employers, principals and educators, professionals from diverse industries, and students and their families all play an important role in this program.
Why is the Career Counseling Program important?
- It offers individualized support that sets students in your community up for career success by exploring their interests, strengths, and values.
- Efforts can be aligned with employer demand and your community’s workforce needs—helping to address workforce shortages, create more structured career pathways for all students, and ensure a seamless transition from education to apprenticeships, training programs, employment, and more.
- It unites employers and students from your community—opening students’ eyes to career possibilities and helping them establish connections with potential employers. It also helps local employers plan for the future of their business or organization.
How Does the Maryland Workforce Association Support Career Counseling?
The Maryland Workforce Association is made up of Maryland’s 13 Local Workforce Directors, who oversee the local workforce development boards that are one of the three main partners of the Career Counseling Program. These boards provide the Career Counseling Program with:
Vital expertise and resources
Direct employer connections
Labor market experience
Life-long career readiness skills
Unique approaches to career pathways like field trips, mentorship, career days, and more
Maryland Workforce Association Members
Real Stories, Real Impact
Experience the power of career counseling from the perspective of career education managers, career coaches, educators, students, and more!
Read 8th Grader Andrea’s Story
“Career coaches [with the Career Counseling Program] help build community relationships and help with career days. Career days help students know what careers they want to do. Before some of the career days at my school, I knew I wanted to be a nurse, but I never knew what type of nurse I wanted to be. Now, after career days, I know I want to be a nurse practitioner and own my own clinic in a hospital. I also have gotten firsthand experience with Maryland Leadership Workshops where you can learn leadership in a whole week. Plus, there are many partnerships, like with Anne Arundel County Community College, with hands-on experience with trades, culinary, robotics, and more.”
Read Career Coach Autumn’s Story
“I was born and raised in Baltimore in a blue collar family—I didn’t come from money. I saw firsthand how communities struggle without resources. My family moved to the country for me to have a better education. Like many millennials, I was told that college was the path to success. Well, I went to college and switched my major three times and eventually had to drop out due to debt. Without direction, I worked a multitude of jobs as a single mother. I worked six days a week in a warehouse just to keep a roof over my head. Pursuing a welding certification allowed me to get back into college to earn my bachelor’s degree in HR management. I worked in workforce re-entry, helping folks transition back into society out of prison. Without these [career counseling] programs, people are lost. I’ve seen what happens when individuals don’t have the guidance and support that they need to navigate their careers, or to simply keep their bills paid. I am a living, breathing example of why career counseling is essential in our schools. My students deserve career exploration beyond the pressure of a four-year degree. I’ve helped students with resumes, job interviews, and nontraditional career paths. I’ve created a supportive space for students to explore their futures. Don’t expect for a second our already overworked school guidance counselors are going to take over this initiative. They’re already overwhelmed with scheduling and supporting students facing mental health challenges and growing stress without the proper support they need at home. The impact of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is critical not just for my students but for future generations. We are living in an everchanging, challenging workforce environment, and it is our responsibility to ensure that students have the tools to navigate it successfully.”
Read Industry Engagement Coordinator Amanda’s Story
“The need to connect students directly with employers and career mentors has never been more acute. Today, we’re facing massive shortages in healthcare, construction, tech, and more. Students don’t know what they don’t know and the burden of keeping up with regional workforce trends can’t fall alone on parents, guidance counselors, and teachers. That’s where I come in. In conjunction with our in-school career coaches, I help connect students with mentors and industry professionals. Thousands of students have heard firsthand accounts of career through 115 Meet a Pro face-to-face sessions and from 347 of our regional employers who connected with students via career talks, career fairs, or panel discussions. In two weeks at the Worlds of Work three-day mega-event, 3,000 8th graders will meet 185 employers to learn about industries and job roles that they may not know anything at all about yet. At some point in the not too distant future, a young person is going to be asked what first drew them to their profession, and they will answer that they met a professional as a result of our program and that was the start of everything for them. This program is the connective tissue between schools’ students and the business community—and the relationship is working.”
Read Career Education Manager Clifton’s Story
“I have the incredible privilege of supporting eight career coaches as they serve in 12 middle and high schools, that represent a portion of the 55 coaches we have that are supporting 65+ middle and high schools in Montgomery County. Our coaches begin the conversation about the world of work in 6th grade. This early engagement helps to augment the ongoing conversation students are having with their teachers, counselors, parents, and friends about what their futures hold. Our coaches utilize dialogic conversations and John Holland’s RIASEC themes to help them better understand how to select their careers and what will be fulfilling and rewarding for them. Our coaches work with their students to help them better understand their strengths, their interests, and their workplace values. This program provides MCPS students with a trusted adult who supports their curiosity and their futures and provides them tools on how to navigate what’s next. As a former classroom teacher, having an additional resource to help my students better understand how to achieve their career goals is a resource that should not be turned away. Our coaches bring decades of workplace knowledge, skills, and experiences to this program. One of my coaches is also a barber. He has spoken to his students about this experience and has a student who comes to him literally every day to pick his brain about how to be a barber, how to cut hair, what guards to use, how to handle specific situations [at work]. These are the types of conversations happening all over MCPS.”
Read Parent Reshawn’s Story
“I am a mother, part of the PTA, and a small business owner. I come from a family of hard workers that were able to become physicians and military police because of education. Even growing up as a small child, I was the person who looked at the encyclopedias and who watched the Olympics because I wanted to find out how the athletes were able to do what they do. I grew up to be a woman in a male-dominated field. [Career counseling] allows us to teach and to inspire others, and I’ve been able to work with Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, and Howard counties to instill that belief in students, so they know no matter what the obstacles are, they have education as the vehicle that propels them forward and allows them to do jobs they’d love to do. I also have a child who is special needs with ADHD and ODD and having a career day opened the door for her to know she could do something in STEM. This experience allowed her to know what she could do as a career and helped her not be so shy or withdrawn.”
Read Career Coach Malik’s Story
“I am a floater career coach, which means I go to different schools in Anne Arundel County to offer support when needed. I had an experience at Southern High School with one of my students where I spoke to her a few times within two to three weeks, and in the short amount of time I had with this student, I have made a huge impact. She spoke to me and told me that before I got here, she had no vision of graduating high school—and she truly believed that. But in three weeks, I was able to help her. She was failing four out of her eight classes and now she’s passing all. She is no longer roaming the hallways—she now sees a vision for herself. She now knows what she wants to do when she graduates high school, which is be a vet. She had no idea what she wanted to do prior to me coming to that school and showing support. You may ask, ‘why can’t the guidance counselors and other support staff at her school help her,’ and she has repeatedly told me that they have no time for her, and they can’t deal with her situation.”
Read Career Coach Rachel’s Story
“As a career coach, I have the opportunity to interact with students that may be falling through the cracks. Our schools are very busy and overloaded, and if you roam the hallways at any given time in the day, you’ll see a lot of students out there that just need someone to listen to them. For example, I have a student who was failing most of her classes, and she’s gone through significant losses, and I was able to talk to her about her plan for the future. She told me she wanted to be a nurse in the army, and I responded that she needed to graduate high school so she could do that. She put some thought into it, and within two weeks she came back to me, and it was getting close to the end of the quarter, and she went from all failing grades to passing everything. Every time she sees me in the hallway, she’ll tell me about her grades or come seek me out just to let me know how she’s doing. And that’s only one student’s experience. With career counseling, we really have the responsibility and duty to impact students. I could have benefited from a career counselor. I changed my major seven times, and I am in debt for college. Was it worth it? Sure, but I could have done trades or pursued something else, but I didn’t even know that stuff existed.”
Read Career Coach Spencer’s Story
“I serve students from 6th grade to 8th grade where we discuss career exploration, life, and what is required of them to be good citizens. In my experience, career coaching provides hope to all students—especially those students, parents, and families who want to do better in life but they’re not sure how to get there. I recently hosted a lunch gathering with a group of students where we discussed overcoming the fear of failure. Some of the fears we discussed were homelessness, being alone, not meeting goals, disappointing those around them, and ultimately, not being successful. As career coaches, we don’t just push into classrooms and discuss modules. We talk to our students about life; we are the standard bearers of what is expected in the workforce, and what is expected of a law-abiding citizen. I would say that students left that meeting with their own goals and reassurance that they do have support, and that there are opportunities for all students. Career coaches turn fear and apprehension into grit and resilience. We turn dreams into goals and goals into deadlines, and those deadlines with their ambition turn into reality and success.”
Excerpts from testimonials pulled from YouTube – APP Committee Session, March 5, 2025.
