The Roadtrip Nation website opens up with the following text: “At Roadtrip Nation, we know what it’s like to feel lost, because we’ve been there. That’s why, in 2001, we hit the road to get advice from people who’d found fulfilling work. Their wisdom taught us there’s no ‘right’ way to build a career—that there were actually endless unique paths we could take forward. Now, their stories will guide you toward work you care about, too.”
Essentially, a personal quest by a group of college graduates seeking their own career clarity turned into a passion project that now provides career guidance to students everywhere. These resources are featured across social media channels, on a YouTube channel, on a companion PBS webpage, and on the official Roadtrip Nation website.
Roadtrip Nation Resources
This is where most of the Roadtrip Nation content lives. You’ll find thousands of professionally recorded and produced videos from Roadtrip Nation’s collection of award-winning films. The tagline on the page reads: “See how people from all walks of life have found fulfilling careers aligned to their interests—and get the inspiration you need to find your path, too.”
These films are also available on YouTube and the PBS website. The videos provide meaningful insights into a multitude of career options and the journeys that real people have taken.
This section also includes a link to the Roadtrip Nation podcast, Roadmap: Find Your Path with Roadtrip Nation. The podcast’s description says it “shows you why it’s OK to get lost” and it declares that it will help you find a direction to go next.
Under this section, you will find two options from Roadtrip Nation: their book and their course.
Their book, Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do With Your Life, is a New York Times Best Seller and is available for purchase through the site.
The second part of this section of the website is the online course, which is free. The course includes both teacher and student account options. Teachers can set up a free account in order to create courses and access a teacher dashboard. The course can also integrate into an LMS experience.
Once teachers set up a course, they get an access code that students can use to enroll. The learning experience, which is project-based and self-paced, consists of five lessons. Students can work through the sequence of online resources and modules, or they can complete the work offline. The online experience is recommended because it includes access to videos, the interest inventory tool, and all the lesson interactions and content.
Throughout the course, students explore their interests and identify matching careers. They then access the integrated videos and resources to receive advice and wisdom from featured professionals. Finally, students set up their own interview with someone working in a field that interests them. The final project is the capstone experience that has the potential to impact the career journeys of students in a personalized way.
The third section features the Roadmap Tool, an interactive online experience that can help students find potential careers that match their interests. This tool is built into the course, but it can also be accessed separately as a stand-alone experience.
When students choose this option, they are greeted with the following message: “Let’s start with what you like! The best career paths for you will always start at the place where your interests meet—so let’s find that intersection! Tell us what you like, and we’ll find career paths you’ll love.”
After clicking the Choose Your Interests button, students are presented with a palette of interest options. Examples include such choices as acting and theater, business, engineering, government, numbers, sports, and technology. After selecting an interest, students will see the same palette again, and they are prompted to choose a second interest area.
Once they’ve chosen two interests, they are then asked to choose from a list in response to the question, “What lights you up at your core?” This menu includes such options as accomplishing goals, being creative, building things, and teaching/mentoring. Once they’ve chosen one of these motivators, students are greeted by their own personalized dashboard. They are provided with an overview video, a list of suggested careers that match their interest choices, a job-trend summary, and links to related Roadtrip Nation content that can help them learn more about the career suggestions. Many of the resources included are videos from the Roadtrip Nation series.
The fourth section allows interested viewers to go further. There’s a link to more information about accessing live events. You can actually apply to go on one of their road trips. And there is also an interactive Share Your Road option, where you can share your own career journey. To participate, you just set up an account and follow a series of prompts.
Integration Ideas
If you’re looking for ways to expose your students to career possibilities, Roadtrip Nation just might be the tool to meet that need. The large collection of content can help increase your students’ career opportunity knowledge and help guide them in their quest for finding a meaningful career. There are multiple ways that you can make use of the resources on this website. Here are a few to consider:
You could go all in and guide your entire class through the five-part, project-based learning experience. It’s well done and easy to manage. Through this course, your students can gain valuable career insights, and you can manage things through the convenient teacher dashboard.
If you don’t have time to do the full-course experience, you might choose to integrate portions of the Roadtrip Nation content into existing parts of your curriculum.
For instance, a speech teacher might assign students to present a career speech. This would benefit not only them but the whole class while also allowing that teacher to meet their communication standards and outcomes.
In this type of scenario, you could have students do the full course, or you might decide to have them complete just the Roadmap Tool, to get recommended careers and some quick overview information. Students who are inspired by this guidance could explore other recommended content in more detail.
Even if you don’t have time to use these resources in a formal way in your classroom, you can still recommend them as options for students who are inquiring about career opportunities. Students can explore the resources on their own, work through the Roadmap Tool, or even do the entire course if they are so motivated.
AVID Connections
This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:
- Instruction
- Rigorous Academic Preparedness
- Opportunity Knowledge
- Student Agency
- Break Down Barriers
- Advocate for Students
Extend Your Learning
- Roadtrip Nation (official website)
- Roadtrip Nation (PBS)
- Roadtrip Nation (Roadtrip Nation via YouTube)