From an early age, children are asked what they want to be when they grow up. They are told that the classes they take and the skills they develop will prepare them for that future career. By middle and high school, conversations shift toward college, technical programs, internships, and the specific skills employers are seeking.
When I was in school, I remember being part of these conversations. In my own classroom, I have engaged with students in similar ways, curious about what they were thinking about for their future and wanting to support them.
But with so many changes in technology–especially with AI accelerating that by creating new roles are emerging, evolving existing jobs, and supporting tasks that once required significant time–how do we prepare students for jobs that do not exist yet?
AI is Changing Tasks, Not Just Job Titles
One of the most frequent questions that comes up in conversations I’ve had about AI and the future of work is, “Which jobs will AI replace?” It’s an important question, but we also need to consider how AI is evolving the tasks involved in any job.
For many professions, AI will start by changing individual responsibilities long before it completely eliminates an entire occupation. Students in my classroom and I have discussed which jobs might be replaced, and why or why not. We have even explored Will Robots Take My Job? and then analyzed each job to determine why the results showed a high likelihood.
Some of the professions we discussed included teachers, attorneys, healthcare professionals, engineers, marketers, and software developers. Many in these fields will likely continue working in their professions, although how they do their work may change substantially.
Some tasks may become automated, while others will become faster. New responsibilities may emerge because AI-generated information needs to be evaluated, decisions must be made about its use, and people affected by those decisions need to be considered. Problems will also arise that technology cannot solve on its own.
With these considerations, students need to continue thinking about the relationship between people and technology, rather than simply learning how to operate technology.
Some questions I ask students include:
- What does AI do well?
- Where does it struggle?
- When does a person need to intervene, and why?
- What happens when the output is wrong?
- Who is responsible for the final decision?
These are career-readiness questions that help students develop technology skills, discernment, critical thinking, and reflection.
Human Skills Are Still Important
As technology advances, the thought may be that developing technical skills will matter more than human skills, but I believe the opposite is true. With so much technology in our world, communication, curiosity, creativity, collaboration, adaptability, empathy, critical thinking, and judgment will become even more valuable because of AI.
Here are some examples: AI can generate a polished response, but we still need to determine whether that response is useful and accurate. It can generate dozens of ideas within seconds, but deciding which idea is worth pursuing requires judgment. AI can summarize information, but knowing what questions to ask about that information remains important.
While technology is capable of automating parts of a process, having a true understanding of everything and everyone impacted by the process and how to adjust is critical. And something that is still an essential human quality.
Students need opportunities to develop these capabilities, and that means tasking them with problems that do not always have one correct answer. It includes asking them to do more than just answer, but to provide an explanation for their decisions, to collaborate, to revise their ideas and respond to feedback, and to work through any challenges that arise rather than backing away from any source of difficulty.
It’s also necessary to create learning experiences that move students beyond simply consuming information and involve them in designing, building, questioning, creating, and finding problems to solve, and then presenting solutions for these.
Students Need AI Literacy, Not Just AI Skills
AI literacy is now essential for career readiness. Students need to know how to write and evaluate prompts, and understand that AI-generated output may be inaccurate or biased. They also need to know how to stay safe and what information should not be shared with an AI platform.
When working with AI, they need to consider intellectual property, transparency, privacy, and responsible use. And what I consider to be very important, developing the judgment to decide when and if AI should be used at all.
As students enter the workplace, they may not always be provided with clear guidelines about when AI is appropriate, as they might be in school, and may need to make those decisions by themselves. If we teach students how to use AI without helping them think critically about its use, we are teaching only part of what they will need to succeed.
Career Exploration Needs Some Change, Too
When I was in high school, career exploration traditionally introduced students to existing professions. That continues to be important, however, for jobs that don’t exist yet, it can be tough for students to imagine the possibilities.
After thinking more about this, I think we need to push student career thinking with some “what-ifs” to explore their interests. They need to consider how AI might change a potential career, what new responsibilities might be required, and which parts of that career require uniquely human strengths.
Another option is to task students with brainstorming what problems might need to be solved five or ten years from now. Engaging them in challenge-based or problem-based learning opportunities might be a good way to spark these conversations and exploration into how the world of work is evolving.
Some ideas to involve students could be having them interview professionals about how their work has been impacted by AI and the changes they are experiencing now. Students can also conduct research on emerging or fast-growing fields of work, redesign a current job description by predicting how it might change in ten years, or identify problems in their communities and come up with ideas about the different types of careers that may develop to address these.
Over the past ten years, I have shifted the questions I use in my own classroom. Rather than asking, “What do you want to be?” I ask, “What problems do you want to help solve?” I then push students to see if technology can be a part of the solution. These questions have led to interesting discussions about existing careers and some that have not been invented yet.
Make Room for Uncertainty
Students come to our classrooms with questions, concerns, and sometimes doubts about their own knowledge. One of the most important things we can model is that we do not have all the answers about what comes next.
While there are people who research and provide insights about the future workforce, predictions about AI, employment, and the essential workforce skills will continue to change as technology evolves. Knowing that can help us guide students to be prepared for change in general and be comfortable when it happens. Developing adaptability and resiliency skills will be highly beneficial.
We should also be creating experiences in which students must iterate because the first solution does not work. We need to provide opportunities to explore new tools, try new strategies, collaborate, receive feedback, adjust, and try again. Students need to understand and embrace productive struggle, and realize that mistakes are often the starting point for learning.
Preparing Students for Work and Beyond
Once they enter the workforce, students will likely work across multiple roles, organizations, and perhaps even entirely different fields over the course of their lives. In our highly digital world, technologies will continue to change, some of the skills in demand today will evolve, and new ones will emerge. And because of all these changes, career readiness is no longer about simply preparing students to have the skills necessary for their first job, but instead being prepared and willing to keep learning after that.
Certain careers may require specific technical knowledge, but any job will also require adaptability, creativity, curiosity, communication, critical thinking, ethical judgment, and the confidence to be faced with something unfamiliar and be able to figure out what to do next.
AI has changed the approach to career readiness, but it has also made schools aware of the need to shift the focus and the conversation. While we may not be able to predict exactly which jobs will be available for our students, we can prepare them to confidently enter an ever-changing world with the skills and mindset to navigate whatever work offers them.
A new question to consider as we think about career readiness is: “Are we preparing students to keep learning when the job, and the world around it, changes?”
