Pilot program in Fayette high schools helps students see their futures in a new way

Malik White, left, Madison Patton and DeZhane Bailey received training to coach fellow students in career and college readiness through the NaviGo program at Lexington's STEAM Academy. Malik, 15, said NaviGo had shown him "I might want to go into politics and law.

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Aujia Hines had little interest last year in going to college and only vague ideas about her future career, and she disliked talking in front of other students.

But Aujia, 15, said a pilot college and career coaching program at Southside Technical Center made her realize that she wanted to be an electrician and go to college.

"I didn't know that so many apprenticeship opportunities were available," Aujia said. Additionally, she said, "now I understand all that college has to offer and all that can come of having a college degree."

Through the pilot program from the Northern Kentucky-based company NaviGo, Aujia also learned how to coach other students in reaching their career and college goals.

Fayette County is the first school district in Kentucky to test the NaviGo program, which works somewhat differently at each of the five high schools where it is being piloted: Southside, Bryan Station, the STEAM Academy, Carter G. Woodson Academy, and the School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

In general, the NaviGo program presents a shift from practices in which career and college planning might be confined to a student's conversations with guidance counselors. The NaviGo curriculum shows teachers and students how to be career and college coaches, "to lay out a plan so students discover their own interests, their passions, their talents," said company founder Tim Hanner, a retired Kenton County school superintendent and a former Kentucky associate commissioner of education.

In addition to providing the pilot program in Fayette County schools, the company has a division for families that hire NaviGo coaches to help students prepare for life after high school.

"High school should be as much about students figuring out what they want to do in life as what they don't want to do," Hanner said.

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Pilot program in Fayette high schools helps students see their futures in a new way