How Teaching Entrepreneurship Can Help Teens Discover Their Strengths and Interests and Prepare for Their Futures

Research shows that today’s students are graduating from high school undecided and anxious about their futures. It’s not their fault. Schools and caregivers can do more to help them define what career success looks like for them – and the course of study and skills development that will get them there. Here are two ways to support our young people in finding the path to doing what they’ll love to do.

1. Start career exploration in middle school
Give all learners equitable access to career exploration beginning in middle school when they are impressionable, open minded, and have a thirst for learning. This is particularly important for students in underserved rural and inner-city communities. If students aren’t exposed to the world of potential career options, they won’t know what’s possible.

We can only accomplish this through a unified approach when schools, parents, guardians, mentors, and the broader community support the process. It’s also important to meet young people where they are, through free digital career readiness platforms, so they have access to opportunities to explore careers and build transferable skills in an environment where they’re already engaged. To achieve this, we must equitably provide free, high-quality digital tools, and affordable broadband access, while recognizing that most of this exploration will be done on their phones. American Student Assistance (ASA) has a suite of digital tools that guide career exploration, give students access to internships and mentors, develop skills for the future, and much more.

There’s no question that exposing students to careers, mentors, internships, and hands-on learning opportunities early on will give them the time required to fully explore their passions and entrepreneurial endeavors that will bring fulfillment.

2. Empower young people through entrepreneurial education and hands-on experiences in high school.
We must bring the power of entrepreneurship to youth in low-income and rural communities and empower teachers, trained volunteers, and mentors with entrepreneurial experience to help young people everywhere. This means bringing public and private sector partners together to inspire young people and ignite the entrepreneurship fire inside them. At the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), this entails helping students understand the vast opportunities and breadth of businesses they can start, many of which help society, our environment, and the world.

Then, we must provide mentors and instructors who can help young people understand what it takes to start and successfully run a business with all the variables and considerations one must research and plan for. This includes helping these fledgling entrepreneurs create business plans and pitches they’ll share with potential investors, which prepares them for all aspects of startup life.

These programs and competitions, which help crisis-proof kids and help them find their strengths and interest, can be found in schools, churches, community centers, libraries, and other institutions nearby, as well as online.

How do we know that an investment in entrepreneurship education makes a measurable impact?

Meet Myles Gage, an impressive entrepreneur and NFTE alumnus, who earned his place on the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list for making waves in the world of investing. His entrepreneurial journey began with a NFTE course in middle school at Ariel Community Academy in Chicago. This early exposure fueled his interest in the stock market. In high school, he co-founded Rapunzl alongside his friend Brian Curcio. Today, he works full-time on gamifying investing and financial education for middle and high school students. Through Rapunzl, nearly 100,000 young people have gained valuable insights into finance, creating a full-circle impact that echoes back to Myles’s own early exploration of career possibilities.

In addition, as part its strategic alliance, NFTE and ASA are collaborating to expand access to high-quality entrepreneurship education programs for middle and high schoolers from rural, marginalized, and economically disadvantaged communities—both in-person and digitally—through school district partnerships and curriculum development. To this end, NFTE’s Exploring Careers Program, which launched in fall of 2023, is designed to provide young people, in grades 6-9, with exposure to a broad exploration of career opportunities in both in-school and out-of-school settings. The program pilot reached over 600 students in Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, California, Florida, and Bermuda in its first year.