
Defined Careers
ELEMENTARY: EXPOSURE & EXPLORATION
Imagine the possibilities when students can see and experience diverse careers from an early age. The Elementary Defined Careers projects offer equitable and engaging career exploration experiences to all students across all career clusters.
Providing students with career-connected learning opportunties early on exposes them to potential career paths and expands their visions of the possibilities for the future. Watch Now >
Empowering Educators to Build Future-Ready Skills Early On
Defined Careers empowers elementary students to explore, experience, and navigate careers through deeper learning experiences that bridge education with future success.
Defined Careers exposes students to careers through hands-on projects that align with all career clusters. Our easy-to-navigate platform helps teachers implement career-connected learning with ease providing them with the tools they need to engage students in career-connected deeper learning.
Each project is based on a real-world career scenario where students are given the agency to choose from two end products to demonstrate their understanding through the lens of a career. Defined Careers projects are customizable, teacher-driven, and support individual and group learning.
Our Framework for Elementary Career Readiness
Each project follows our hands-on model to engage students in career-connected deeper learning. Dive deeper below!


Real World Connection
The real world connection video helps students understand how the content in a task connects to the world outside of the classroom.


GRAS
The Goal, Role, Audience, and Situation (GRAS) video provides the framework for students in how they will be designing their products.
Sample Elementary Defined Careers Projects
There are four courses available within Elementary Defined Careers:
- K-2 Careers Around Us
- 3-5 Career Experiences
- 3-5 Financial Literacy
- 3-5 Entrepreneurship


Environmental Technician


Electrical Engineer
Electrical engineers create or fix electrical equipment.They build new systems and improve old ones. Students will apply STEM concepts to create a prototype or drawing to solve a problem and help their audience understand what their design will do.


Camp Director: Budgeting
As a Camp Director, students will find ways to help their camp budget, plan, and cut costs to afford important supplies needed during the summer. The students will apply the concepts of budgeting and planning for expenses.
Additional Features & Resources
Financial Literacy COURSESThese courses focus on The National Standards for Personal Financial Education (NSPFE). Each task highlights financial thinking practices, encouraging students to frame problems in ways that inspire inquiry, knowledge, problem-solving, and innovation. |
Entrepreneurship COURSESThese courses focus on entrepreneurship standards from The National Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education (ESHIP). Each task highlights entrepreneurship skills, encouraging students to frame problems in ways that inspire inquiry, problem-solving, and innovation. |
Book CatalogOur K-5 book catalog aligns commonly used books to Defined Careers projects to deepen understanding and allow students to take a deeper dive into their interests. |
TEACHER PLANNING GUIDEOur planning guide is a resource to help teachers implement a course. It contains resources such as background on the course, topics covered in the course, how the course is laid out, and more. |