Barbers Hill Independent School District
Mont Belvieu, Texas
It’s an early March morning and a group of fifth graders can picture red carpets, popping flashbulbs, and the iconic Hollywood sign in the distance. However, when these students look out the windows of their classroom, they don’t see palm trees and crashing waves, but flat terrain and prairie grasslands. That’s because they’re not located in sunny California, but instead 1,500 miles away, in Barbers Hill Independent School District, Texas. They’re using Discovery Education’s Career Connect to chat with Bianca Engel, Director of Technical Management for Warner Bros. Discovery, about how she produces special effects, and she’s creating an image so vivid that students feel transported to the glitz and glamour of the west coast.
Barbers Hill ISD Discovers Career Connect
Barbers Hill ISD, a Discovery Education 2026 District of the Year located on the outskirts of Houston, is a close-knit community of “Lifelong Eagles.” This means students feed in from the early childhood center, through two elementary, intermediate, and middle schools, and then meet back together in the high school. An “A” rated district with a 98% graduation rate, educators in Barbers Hill ISD work tirelessly to meet student needs.
Barbers Hill is a longtime partner of Discovery Education, but they knew that each year introduced new offerings and updates. In 2024, Elaina Kloecker, Technology Integration Coach for Intermediate Schools, was working with her colleagues to unearth all those new features. “Experience is so much more than just videos,” she shared. “So, we wound up taking the time to really dig in, and kept saying to each other, ‘Did you see this article? Did you see this interactive?’ Then we saw the blue button for Career Connect.” That single click opened a world of possibilities for students.
Kloecker quickly fell in love with Career Connect, which allows educators to bring professionals from a wide range of industries directly into their classrooms. Through these interactions, students learn firsthand about different occupations, the paths professionals took to reach their careers, and how the skills students are developing today may apply to their own futures.
Connecting Readiness to Real Careers
Barbers Hill ISD takes career readiness seriously, with a goal of 100% CCMR, meaning college, career, and military ready.
Kloecker recognized how readily Career Connect could align with curriculum and standards already being taught. She helped match an energy conservationist with sixth graders studying conservation, a financial risk manager for a unit on financial literacy, and, of course, Bianca Engel at Warner Brothers, who enjoyed the session as much as the students.
Engel praised the program, saying, “It’s fun talking to students, a group with fresh eyes and brains, about the stuff I talk about every single day to jaded adults who don’t always see the wonder or whimsy in what we do.”
Engel did not follow a traditional career path and shares that fact with students. “Sometimes there are twists and turns! You don’t have to have it all figured out right now,” she said. She encouraged Kloecker’s class to explore and learn about choices now, at a young age.
Turning Enthusiasm into Training
Kloecker and her colleagues have had such a positive experience with Career Connect, it led them to conduct a professional development day to help other Barbers Hill educators get acquainted with the program. They brought in a Career Connect volunteer, Charu Madan of Capital One, who walked teachers through what a Career Connect experience with students would look like. “She was phenomenal!” said Kloecker. Madan shared with educators everything she would go over with students, including her personal career path and what her day as a Senior Project Manager looks like, with plenty of time for the (inevitable) student questions. Now, teachers are ready to head into the new school year with another tool in their belt to help make learning meaningful.
Quick Facts
District Details
- 9 schools serving 7,000+ students in PreK-12
Three Takeaways About Career Connect in Barbers Hill
- Career readiness starts early, in grades 4-6, supporting Barbers Hill ISD’s goal of 100% CCMR.
- It plugs directly into existing curriculum, from conservation units to financial literacy lessons.
- Teachers are trained and ready to bring it into classrooms this year, after a professional development day gave them a firsthand look at the student experience.
