Before children choose a career, they need opportunities to imagine one.
A hand shoots up from the middle of the classroom.
“I know!”
The teacher smiles.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A veterinarian.”
Another hand.
“A firefighter!”
“I want to be a hockey player.”
“A scientist.”
“An astronaut.”
“A teacher.”
And then, from somewhere near the back of the room:
“I don’t know yet.”
The classroom laughs—not unkindly. But that last answer may be every bit as valuable as the others.
Because an elementary classroom is not a place where children are supposed to decide what they will do for the rest of their lives. It is a place where they begin discovering who they are.
The question What do you want to be when you grow up? sounds simple. For generations, adults have asked it almost automatically. But for a young child, the answer is rarely a carefully considered occupational choice.
A child who says, “I want to be a doctor,” may really be saying, I like helping people.
A child who wants to become an engineer may be saying, I love building things.
A future teacher may simply love explaining things to classmates.
And the child who announces that they will become a professional hockey player may be telling us something about competition, teamwork, physical activity, belonging—or simply the joy of playing a game they love.
The job title is only the beginning.
“The goal isn’t to get children to commit to a career. The goal is to help them become curious about themselves and the world.”
A career doesn’t begin with a job title
Adults tend to hear the word career and think about occupations, qualifications, résumés, salaries and post-secondary education. Children don’t.
For them, career development begins much closer to home: with interests, relationships, strengths, questions and experiences.
Instead of asking only What do you want to be?, we can begin asking:
What do you enjoy?
What are you good at—or interested in becoming good at?
What kinds of problems do you like solving?
Who do you like helping?
What makes you curious?
What kind of work looks interesting to you?
What would you like to learn more about?
Those questions develop something more durable than an early occupational decision: self-awareness. Canadian career-development approaches increasingly describe career development as a journey involving self-awareness, exploration, skill development, experience, planning and transitions. Manitoba’s career-development resources, for example, emphasize understanding oneself, exploring the world of work and developing the skills needed to navigate future choices.
That journey does not suddenly begin when a student reaches high school. It has already been underway for years.
The career story begins earlier than we think
Long before students choose high-school courses, they are building ideas about themselves.
They notice who does different kinds of work.
They see what adults around them do.
They absorb messages from books, television, social media and their communities.
They begin deciding what they are “good at.”
They encounter subjects they love—and subjects they decide are “not for them.”
They notice who seems to belong in particular jobs.
They develop assumptions about what is possible.
Some of those assumptions are helpful.
Some may be limiting.
That is why elementary school can play such an important role: not by narrowing children’s choices, but by widening their understanding of what is possible.
Professional guidance on elementary career development recognizes that children begin developing ideas about occupations and their own abilities well before secondary school.
The implication is important.
Career education does not need to mean career selection.
It can mean career awareness.
It can mean helping a child discover that there are hundreds of ways to use a particular interest.
It can mean meeting someone whose job the child has never heard of.
It can mean discovering that a love of animals could lead to veterinary medicine—but also wildlife conservation, animal behaviour, agriculture, research, animal care, environmental science or dozens of other possibilities.
“Elementary career education isn’t about narrowing the future. It is about making the future bigger.”
What do you want to be? And what if the answer changes?
Imagine asking a six-year-old what they want to be and then expecting the answer to remain unchanged.
It sounds absurd.
Yet adults sometimes treat children’s career aspirations as though consistency were the goal.
It isn’t.
A child who wants to be a marine biologist this year, a chef next year and an architect the year after isn’t failing to decide.
The child is exploring.
Changing one’s mind is part of learning.
A healthy elementary approach to career development tells children:
You don’t have to know yet.
You are allowed to change your mind.
There are careers you have never heard of.
Your interests can change.
You can discover strengths you don’t know you have.
The things you learn in school can lead to many different futures.
That last message may be especially important.
School is not simply preparing children for one occupation.
It is helping them develop capabilities they can carry into many possible futures.
Every subject has a career story
Career education does not have to appear on the timetable as another subject.
It can live inside the learning already happening.
A mathematics lesson can open a conversation about construction, engineering, business, science, technology, architecture, sports statistics or health care.
A science unit can introduce environmental scientists, veterinarians, engineers, agricultural specialists, medical professionals and researchers.
Reading and writing can lead to authors, journalists, editors, translators, communicators, screenwriters and storytellers.
Art can introduce illustrators, designers, architects, animators, photographers and creative entrepreneurs.
Social studies can lead students into questions about communities, government, history, culture, leadership and the many occupations that help communities function.
Even ordinary classroom activities contain career connections.
Who organizes materials?
Who solves a problem?
Who explains an idea?
Who designs something?
Who works with others?
Who notices that something isn’t working and figures out how to improve it?
These are not merely classroom behaviours.
They are skills with value far beyond school.
Canada’s Skills for Success framework identifies foundational skills including reading, writing, numeracy, digital skills, problem solving, communication, creativity and innovation, collaboration and adaptability.
The message to children therefore doesn’t need to be:
“You need to learn this because it will get you a job.”
It can be:
“You are building skills that can help you create many possible futures.”
Teachers don’t assign destinations. They open doors.
This changes the role of the teacher.
The teacher doesn’t need to know what every student should become.
The teacher’s role can be much more powerful: helping children discover possibilities.
A teacher might ask:
What do you enjoy doing when you have a choice?
What is something you are getting better at?
What problem would you like to solve?
Who would you like to help?
What kind of person might do this work?
What would you need to learn?
What other jobs might involve the same skills?
The answers can tell teachers a great deal.
A child’s response may reveal interests, assumptions, confidence, uncertainty—or simply a gap in experience.
Consider a classroom in which nearly every child names one of five occupations.
That isn’t a problem to correct.
It’s a question to investigate.
What careers have these children not encountered?
Whose work is missing from their picture of the world?
What experiences could broaden their understanding?
Manitoba’s career-development resources emphasize a process of understanding oneself, exploring what is “out there” and considering “where do I fit?”
For elementary students, the first two steps may matter enormously.
Before children can imagine where they might fit, they need opportunities to discover what exists.
The power of saying, “I didn’t know that job existed.”
A child cannot easily imagine a career they have never encountered.
That makes exposure matter.
A guest speaker can matter.
A community walk can matter.
A family member explaining what they actually do at work can matter.
A picture book featuring an unfamiliar occupation can matter.
A field trip can matter.
A classroom project that asks students to investigate how a community works can matter.
Representation matters, too.
Children benefit from encountering people with different backgrounds, experiences, skills and pathways into work.
This is particularly important for students who may have less access to occupational networks outside school.
A Manitoba review of career-development practices has highlighted the importance of helping students understand the breadth of possibilities and recognizing that some young people have limited exposure to occupations beyond those encountered in their families and communities.
Career exploration can therefore also be an issue of access and equity.
Every child deserves the opportunity to say:
“I didn’t know that job existed.”
And then:
“Maybe I could do something like that.”
Parents: Your dinner-table conversations count
Schools aren’t the only places where children learn about work.
They learn at home, too.
They watch what adults do.
They hear conversations about work.
They notice which occupations receive admiration and which are dismissed.
They hear whether work is described as meaningful, stressful, creative, boring, necessary, rewarding—or simply something adults do for a paycheque.
Parents can expand that conversation without turning it into a career-planning exercise.
When a child says, “I want to be a professional hockey player,” the immediate response doesn’t have to be, “You need a backup plan.”
Try:
“What do you love about hockey?”
The answer might be competition.
Or teamwork.
Or strategy.
Or fitness.
Or leadership.
Or being part of a group.
Suddenly, one occupational dream has become an exploration of interests and strengths—and potentially dozens of different futures.
The same approach works with almost any dream.
“What do you think you would enjoy about that job?”
“What would you have to learn?”
“Who else does work like that?”
“What other jobs let people do something similar?”
“What would you like to help people with?”
The goal isn’t to correct the dream.
It is to get curious about it.
What if a child says, “I don’t know”?
Perhaps we should stop treating those three words as a problem.
“I don’t know yet” can be a perfectly healthy answer.
It can mean:
I haven’t had enough experiences yet.
I haven’t discovered what interests me.
I don’t know enough about the possibilities.
I’m still figuring myself out.
The appropriate response may be another question:
“What would you like to try?”
That shifts the conversation from prediction to exploration.
And exploration is something children can actually do.
They can build.
Experiment.
Write.
Draw.
Interview.
Volunteer.
Play.
Research.
Visit.
Create.
Ask questions.
Fail.
Try again.
Every one of those experiences adds another piece to the picture a child is building of themselves and their world.
The goal isn’t certainty. It’s curiosity.
Perhaps the most important thing adults can do with the question What do you want to be when you grow up? is to change what we expect the question to accomplish.
We don’t need a definitive answer.
We don’t need a five-year plan.
We don’t need a career pathway.
We don’t even need the same answer next month.
What we need is a child who is beginning to ask:
What am I interested in?
What am I capable of?
What might I learn?
What problems could I help solve?
What kinds of people could I work with?
What possibilities are out there?
Canada’s career-development thinking increasingly frames career development as an ongoing process rather than a single decision. Manitoba’s resources, for example, describe career development as a continuing journey involving self-awareness, exploration, skill development, planning, experience and transitions.
For an elementary student, that journey can begin with something as small as a blank line on a worksheet.
When I grow up, I want to be a __________.
Fill it in.
Change it.
Cross it out.
Try another.
Discover something new.
The blank isn’t a commitment.
It’s an invitation.
So, what should a child write in the blank?
Anything.
A veterinarian.
A carpenter.
A teacher.
A scientist.
A farmer.
A video-game designer.
A nurse.
A chef.
A pilot.
An artist.
A mechanic.
An astronaut.
A professional athlete.
A job the adults in the room have never heard of.
Or simply:
“I don’t know yet.”
All of these answers can begin a valuable conversation.
Because the purpose of When I grow up, I want to be a __________ isn’t to predict a child’s future.
It is to help a child begin imagining one.
And when teachers and parents take that imagination seriously—while giving children the freedom to change, explore and discover—we give them something more valuable than an early career choice.
We give them a growing sense that their future is something they can participate in creating.
That may be one of the most important lessons elementary education can offer.
“Before children choose a career, they need opportunities to imagine one.”
By: Lindsay Taylor
