March Madness Career Brackets Inspire Hopewell Heroes to Dream Big

In contrast to the conventional March Madness basketball brackets, there were no “busted” brackets among those created by Hopewell ECS students this year.

“That’s the best part. There were no wrong answers,” explained Hopewell counselor Aly McIntosh, who redesigned the school’s bracket-based career exploration project this year to personalize the experience for each Hopewell student. The former tradition, started three years ago by McIntosh, ended with a school-wide “Hopewell Career of the Year,” as determined by popular vote. This year, that shifted to a different final career “pick” by every single student. 

“This year's format of individual brackets allowed students to keep track of their own interests,” said Hopewell first grade teacher Holly Thorpe. “It really supported student autonomy and furthered project-based learning that involved students diving further into each career.”

The tradition of curating and releasing video submissions from parents, staff and community members continued to be a staple this year. The library of videos even grew, showcasing such careers as an app programmer, daycare owner, make-up artist and a gamer, among many others. 

But this year, the videos shown during morning announcements over the course of several weeks were just a launching pad for class discussions, research projects, read-alouds, crafts and other activities that McIntosh prepared and made available to her colleagues. Teachers had the option to pick the activities that fit best and in some cases, served as an extension of other lessons. 

Kindergarten teacher Natalie Surette, for example, used careers as the topic for the book her students would publish as a class. Each student owned a page where they shared their individual career choice. They also enjoyed coming to school one day dressed up as that person. Surette took it a step further, imploring her parents to add more material to the school-provided videos. 

“Students loved seeing their parents and classmates’ parents on the big screen,” she said. “It made it real for them.”

Thorpe selected the interview activity prepared by McIntosh, challenging her students to interview each other for the specific careers they were interested in after completing their own job applications. The videos spurred countless class discussions and served as a prompt for new reading and writing assignments, too. 

“This experience was important for my students because it allowed them to think about long-term goals and provided them with opportunities they may not have outside the classroom,” said Thorpe, adding that her students’ enthusiasm for the subject remained high week after week. “It allowed them to see careers outside of what family members do and open their mind to the idea that their interests and hobbies can be life-long careers.” 

Still others hosted their own career fair and assigned research projects to dive deeper into their top career choices. 

As refreshing as it was to see the teachers taking it in different directions though, McIntosh most appreciated the many different directions students took it in. She loved hearing students talk about their decision to combine two different careers, one student landing on a makeup artist at Kings Island, she recalls. 

“This is such a good age to introduce careers because they are in the mindset that they can be whatever they want to be and it doesn’t have to be so practical,” McIntosh said. “They can dream.” 

It’s not too late to submit your own career video! Help Hopewell continue building out its library of career spotlights for next school year’s big showdown.