Naviance: he who shall not be named and the bane of our collective high school existence. The students of LHS have been hounded and haunted by the never-ending list of Naviance tasks since its infamous arrival in 2016. While there are a few requirements in the system that are more or less a waste of time, Naviance does hold some useful tools.
Eons ago, back when the current seniors of LHS were tiny know-it-all freshmen, the Londonderry school district made the decision to implement Naviance into its high school curriculum. Granted, the first time doing anything is a bit of a rough and bumpy road, especially when you are “forcing” 1,200 some odd students to do some surveys, but I think we just introduced Naviance at the wrong time.
Incoming students are introduced to Naviance during their freshman orientation. Not only is going back to school a day early horrible enough, but you also have to hear the endless list of threats and warnings if you don’t complete your Naviance profile by January.
The talk about Naviance is basically just a quick run-through of the website and about an hour of threats if you don’t complete what is asked of you. And of course, these threats are a bombardment of emails from main guidance and your transcript saying that you didn’t complete Naviance.
The issue with giving 300 freshmen –that may as well still be considered 8th graders– an ungraded task five months away, is that it is almost a guarantee that they won’t do it. And I think most people simply don’t care about taking it seriously. Which brings me to my main point.
Freshmen just don’t care. I know it sounds a bit cold, but it’s not entirely wrong. The only thing that freshmen care about is getting their morning coffee and feeling powerful because “they’re big and tough high schoolers now.” So how can you possibly expect one to take a “do what you survey” and take it seriously?
Most people, including myself, will spam that mouse button to get to the end and let Naviance identify good careers based on your selected answers. Except for the answers provided are total BS.
A good way to get a quick laugh is to take a look at the recommended career pathways. I have always been a kid who loves biology and health science, but according to Naviance, I work best in “Public Transportation” or “Agriculture”. And I will make this clear now: humans are more likely to invent the time machine than they are to see me driving a bus or working on a farm.
So one of two things happened here: A) Naviance really just does a bad job at matching people with jobs based on personality and interest, or B) I clicked random answers just to get to the end and Naviance paired me with jobs for the random answers I chose (I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s the second option).
One of the unfortunate things about faking your way out of a survey is that you can’t redo it when you actually care about your future…during junior year. The only way to redo something in Naviance is to have your guidance counselor override your previous completed task. And that’s just more worth that can be easily avoided.
With that being said, why don’t we save the important thing that can actually help students for a time when they really care?
While there are lots more tools in Naviance, they all follow the same basic principle, such as the college list and resume. Come freshman year, no one knows what college they want to go to, let alone what field they might be interested in pursuing. So again, why make some high school newbie make a list of dream colleges they just heard of? And I think it is safe to say most freshman resumes are pretty empty.
Then again, so are mine and I’ve been walking these halls for the last four years.
Naviance can really help you if you take the time. But why take the time to do something if you don’t care about it? There is an easy fix. Wait for people to care, it only takes two years. Why rush?
Mr. Prince
Apr 20, 2020 at 9:05 am
Hi Mike,
I value your comments about career education and Naviance. I agree there are aspects of the process which invite critique. The intent is to help individuals establish meaningful goals suited to their abilities and interests perhaps saving money and time to reach those aspirations. For some it can help to secure a sense of direction and motivation by steering towards courses that match interests and abilities. Admittedly it isn’t a perfect process. It has also moved my role somewhat away from the role of supportive listener/clarifier to one of compliance officer (have you completed your CCR goals yet, blah, blah, blah, etc.). These roles are not necessarily congruent with one another either. Perhaps there is some middle ground for both of us using tools like Naviance as tools best employed recognizing limitations but potentially rendering enhanced value when accompanied by reason, judgement, dialogue and reflection especially over time. All kinds of events in our lives are developmental all through our lives and career development is just one of them. Again , I appreciate your writing and value the opportunity to pause and reflect myself. Win-Win. 🙂
Elaine Pitocchelli
Mar 31, 2020 at 5:30 pm
First I’ve heard of the Naviance Program. You describe it well. Educators, and other professionals really love their testing tools.
I tend to agree with you that Freshman year is too early for a student to really know what they want to be doing college and career wise. And, I do agree that it should be repeated at the beginning of Junior year so a comparison and analysis can be made of both sets of testing. I don’t know whether the results of the Freshman testing are discussed with the students at that time. If not, I would see that useful, but open to further growth changing answers over time.
Anyway, great writing.