2026 CSTA PK12 COMPUTER SCIENCE STANDARDS

One insight I gained is how naturally career exploration can be woven into computer science instruction. One action I plan to take is helping students connect their personal interests to careers that use computing. How are you helping students discover technology careers they may not already know about?

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Latoya Jones
Coral Springs FL
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Latoya,

I like that you asked a question in your post. Makes it easy to respond, but I never thought of doing that. THANKS!

I attended a cybersecurity conference this year and there was SO MUCH I learned about. I plan to introduce my kiddos to that part of CS-there are so many jobs there that one might not expect and they really cover the spectrum of careers too. Additionally, I love using Amazon Future Engineers Career Tours...they are much better than I had expected and did really make an impression with some of my students. I had a student that is a sports fanatic to his core. He was impressed to see how CS is being used in Sports with the "Prime Video Sports" tour. 

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Nadia Valenzuela
Roswell NM
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Hi Layota,

Thanks for starting this topic.   I ended up looking at career exploration standards in some of the exercises in the course too.   One of the things that has struck me recently is that with generative AI we really have to consider ways to tie computing to personal interests and problems that students want to solve now to motivate them to really want to learn CS and not just get a grade. Beyond the basics, we really don't know what programming/software development techniques we will want students to learn five years from now, but we will always want students to learn how to find and solve problems they see around them and use computer science to get them there.  Although I am now retired, one thing I wanted to explore was a lesson plan to help students brainstorm, select, research, and design projects that they find truly motivating that they could use for capstone or end-of course projects, hackathons, CSTO competitions, or even competitions such as the Congressional App Challenge or CSTA's own Cutler-Bell prize/  

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Lawrence Tanimoto
VP Communications, CSTA Washington
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher CTE (retired)
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