Learning By Doing In Maryland: Redefining Career-Connected Education

What the future of education looks like depends on your vantage point.

Some are fast to embrace the admittedly exciting bold new possibilities of Artificial Intelligence as the future sine qua non of effective schooling. Others keenly observe the fundamentally relational aspects of teaching and learning–they observe the plain reality that without excellent teaching, a future-fit education isn’t possible. And still others are pushing to reimagine the very notion of a location and time constrained conception of school. They see a future where learners engage well beyond the classroom to grow and gain new skills.

What all of these perspectives get right is that the future demands different things from our education system than it had previously. It requires new ways of thinking and doing that will equip all learners with the ability to thrive. It requires creating education experiences that prepare young people for long life learning.

That’s because thriving in a fast-evolving world, personally and professionally, demands an enduring commitment and ability to learn. Instilling that capacity in young people empowering them to succeed amid volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity–both today and tomorrow.

In this vein, school systems are working hard to create meaningful pathways to life after school that enable students to develop their passions and become self-directed learners. We appear to be in the beginning stages of a growing effort to reinvigorate career-connected learning, where exposure to the world of work starts early and many students engage in workplace-based learning in high school on their way to earning high-value credentials.

On a state level, some of the most forward-leaning work is happening in Maryland.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future was passed into law in 2021 and aims to put the state on world-class footing across the next 10 years. As ambitious and comprehensive as any statewide transformation effort in the country, Maryland’s work features pillars founded upon the practices and insights gleaned from the experience of the world’s best education systems. A primary pillar of Maryland’s Blueprint is a focus on preparing “graduates for success in college and the workforce by ensuring they have the knowledge and skills to complete entry-level credit-bearing college courses and work in high-wage and high-demand industries.”

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To see what this looks like in practice, one needs just drive over the Bay Bridge from Annapolis to Queen Anne’s County, where new investments in career and technical education, career coaches, and expansion of apprenticeships and work-based learning are creating more engaging learning environments for students, delivering high-value credentials to graduates, and instilling a belief in long life learning across the school system.

Hailey Gill, a senior in the nursing program at Queen Anne's County High School, works multiple days in a real health care setting and will graduate with both Certified Nursing Assistant and Geriatric Nursing Assistant credentials. She thinks her robust work-based learning experience in high school will give her an advantage when she enrolls in a four-year college degree program after high school to pursue her RN and, eventually, an advanced degree as a Nurse Practitioner.

“To have this head start going into college, having hands on experience, I think it gives me a leg up” she said. “Working in a real professional environment working with real patients, my own patience has grown and my time management has grown.”

The learning is engaging and the content is interesting–Gill noted during a recent interview.

"I really like the classes. I’m gaining knowledge about the actual career that I want to do, which makes me want to come to school." She also noted the strong sense of community, saying "Everyone in the program, we’re close, we’re like family–our teacher calls us one big family because we really are. We’re not just classmates, we’re coworkers too."

Beatrice Holthaus, a sophomore in the Project Lead the Way engineering program, is eyeing a potential career in aerospace engineering. She learned about the program through her parents and school counselors. As someone who was “always building” things like robots, the prospect of “working with things so far away from us in outer space but making them work well” makes the learning exciting.

Holthaus, a standout goalkeeper for her high school’s state championship-bound varsity girl’s soccer team, pointed to the collaborative nature of the classes and the need to identify solutions from multiple possibilities.

"The engineering classes are a lot more hands-on and interactive, more teamwork,” she said. “There are more potential solutions. Other classes there's more of a right and wrong answer. With this, it's about finding your own way to a solution with your project partners."

The classwork is rich and rewarding. Holthaus says she’s gaining skills, and sharpening her ability to succeed and learn in a team-based environment. And while college is still a few years off for the sophomore, the experiences she’s gaining are clarifying for her what career path she’d like to pursue.

“I like learning by doing,” she said. “It's less books and paper and more about you’re in the shop and you find your way by doing it. We designed shoes and advertised them, went through the whole process of how a manufacturer would create a product. Now we’re building robots, using a lot of sensors, having them interact with the outside world, not just programming them to do specific things. When we work together in class, we have to divide and conquer. We each pick our strengths, collaborate with our teammates to make sure they’re doing ok, and do a lot of communicating and problem solving together to reach our goals.”

With such positive experiences, it’s no wonder Queen Anne’s County Schools has a waiting list for their 17 CTE pathways. Nearly 1,400 students across two high schools are enrolled this year–which represents a 45% increase over historical averages.

Across these diverse career pathways, students are gaining valuable skills, credentials, and real-world experience that will set them up for long-term success. The future of education is unfolding in Queen Anne's County. Young people are seeing the value in the programming in Queen Anne’s County, in other Maryland school districts, and well beyond. The engagement and belonging that students report in these programs is a particularly powerful dynamic during a time where schools are facing chronic absenteeism crisis and too many young people are grappling with mental health challenges resulting from social disconnection.

The experiences of students like Hailey and Beatrice illuminate what the future of education can look like. Their stories demonstrate how career-connected learning creates multiple pathways to success, fosters deep engagement, builds real-world skills, and instills a lifelong learning mindset.

By connecting classroom learning to career opportunities, fostering strong relationships between students and teachers, and creating authentic work experiences, forward-thinking systems–including the state of Maryland and Queen Anne’s County–are preparing young people not just for their first job, but for a lifetime of learning and adaptation in a rapidly evolving world.

This is what a future-fit education looks like – not just in theory, but in practice.