“Crossing the Canyon” with the Catalyze Community
At Catalyze, we believe that there is no one-size-fits-all pathway for young people to pursue meaningful and fulfilling careers. Through career-connected learning, our national network of grantees creates opportunities for young people to build agency as they look to navigate their education and career opportunities from middle school through high school and beyond.
However, not all learners have the opportunity to engage in career-connected learning programs today. A recent report from our partners at The Reinvention Lab at Teach for America explores the challenges and opportunities in the field to support students as they navigate the transition after high school.
Between February and May 2023, The Reinvention Lab interviewed young people across the United States as they prepared to navigate life after high school. In a new report titled Crossing the Canyon, The Reinvention Lab explores findings and insights from the interviews, as well as interviews with adults supporting these young people, likening this first major transition from youth to adulthood to a dangerous and stressful “canyon crossing,” for which many students feel unprepared.
Crossing the Canyon outlines how these young people defined their future success, with responses mainly falling into three categories: economic mobility, self-exploration and belonging, and societal legitimacy. And while students had diverse perspectives and hopes for their futures, they all initially identified going to college as the pathway that would most shape their decisions in the transition to adulthood.
For many, though, college does not provide a sufficient pathway to cross the canyon and attain the three aforementioned indicators of success. Instead, young people want to explore many different pathways and options outside the “college for all” narrative they’ve always been told — they want to experience and explore multiple safe passages and canyon crossings, and they need support in doing so.
The report outlines two key actions to support young people as they find a pathway that works best for them rather than trying to force a one-size-fits-all approach. First, there is a need to center youth agency. Second, there must be a coordinated support system, including adults, educators, organizations and more, all committed to helping young people build agency and achieve the three markers of success.
Crossing the Canyon establishes a framework that categorizes this coordinated system of supporters across the educational ecosystem into four quadrants: Bridge Builders, Map Makers, Trail Guides and Transport Helicopters. Each quadrant has strengths, vulnerabilities and best practices for collaborating with others.
The report found that while all quadrants are necessary, Bridge Builders are unique in how they transfer social capital to students, generating actual job offers and opportunities to young people. They forge connections with employers and work to shift their mindsets and policies on hiring. Their radical approaches offer concrete lessons for the ecosystem as a whole — including the importance of acknowledging systemic inequalities and failures, advocating for new opportunities and making long-term commitments beyond graduation.
Mapping the Catalyze Community
The Catalyze grantee community got an early look at the Crossing the Canyon framework while at SXSW EDU. Practitioners from 24 grantee organizations convened to engage in an interactive custom-built learning experience hosted by The Reinvention Lab to gain deeper insights into the report’s framework and learn how to apply it to their own work.
During this learning experience, 59% of attendees identified their organizations and career-connected learning programs as Bridge Builders, which the report identifies as the most innovative but least common across the four quadrants.
This data confirms that Catalyze is effectively surfacing and funding some of the most innovative programs in career-connected learning. Grantees from all rounds of the Catalyze Challenge, including Oregon STEM, nXu, Escalate, and Project Success, identified as Bridge Builders.
Crossing the Canyon details how it will take a coalition of stakeholders and supporters to identify how to create a more coordinated canyon crossing that works for all young people. As one of the largest communities of career-connected learning innovators in the nation, Catalyze will continue to share and develop original insights that advance the field toward a more equitable and successful future.
