Career Choices & the online 10-year plan is an interdisciplinary curriculum that engages students and teachers in an interactive learning process, helping them develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to successfully:

• examine their own lives
• explore and evaluate a wide range of education and career options, and
• make reasoned and researched goals for their future.

Ideal for 8th- or 9th-grade students, this semester or year-long course Freshman Transition course facilitates the in-depth exploration of three fundamental questions:


These questions drive the academically-integrated curriculum, making it relevant, rigorous, and relationship-rich. The course culminates with students developing an individualized, online, 10-year plan that motivates them to envision a self-sufficient, productive life beyond high school, college or post-secondary training.

To maintain student motivation and direction, the online 10-year plan becomes a common planning tool used throughout each student’s time in high school. Students revisit and update their 10-year plans in academic classes during their 10th, 11th, and 12th-grade years. Instructors use the 10-year plans for advisory and academic coaching functions, particularly when student's educational effort does not match their lifestyle expectations.

Career Choices and the 10-year Plan align to The George Washington University’s Freshman Transition Initiative whole-school redesign model and Course Standards for Freshman Transition Classes, as well as the U.S. Department of Education’s recommendations for successful dropout prevention programs.