Career class activity

A career class activity for one 45-minute period

A lesson plan for career classes, advisory periods and counselors. Students find their Holland code (RIASEC), pick a career that looks interesting, and work out what they'd need to learn about it. Nobody needs an account. Timings, questions and exactly what the site asks of students and keeps are all on this page.

Time: One 45-minute period. In a longer period, give the wrap-up more room.
Group size: A whole class. Without sign-in, SkillTree sets no limit on numbers.
Cost and sign-up: Free. Students don't need to sign up or sign in.
Age: Ages 14 and up. SkillTree has no parental-consent process yet, so it isn't for younger students. Check your class before you plan on it.

What to prepare

Take the Interest Profile yourself first. It takes about five minutes.
Check that students can use phones, or book a computer lab.
Put the address on the board: playskilltree.com/journey/interest-profile
Put up six signs around the room: Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Artistic (A), Social (S), Enterprising (E), Conventional (C).
On shared computers, use a private window. Answers stay in the browser, so the next student could see them otherwise.
Check your school's rules on outside websites, if it has any.

Which journeys to use, and why

A journey is one of SkillTree's short self-discovery quizzes. Use the Interest Profile in class, and offer Career Quest as optional homework.

In class

Interest Profile

48 activities, about 5 minutes

It asks only whether an activity sounds enjoyable, not about skills, money or training, so it doesn't turn into a talk about grades. Students get a Holland code, careers to explore and something to try this month. It doesn't use AI, so a whole class can take it at once.

Open it →

As homework

Career Quest

20 choices

Students play through a story in a world they pick, and an AI reads their choices and writes up five real careers. Readings are limited to 3 a minute and 12 an hour from one internet address, though, so a class on school Wi-Fi will get blocked. There's also a site-wide daily cap. That's why it works better as homework. Some worlds have AI voice narration, so headphones help.

Open it →

Step by step

0-5 min
Frame it
Try: "Interests aren't abilities, and this won't tell you what to do with your life. Answer whether something sounds fun, not whether you'd be good at it."
5-13 min
Take the Interest Profile
Each student on their own. About five minutes, with some slack. Anyone done early can read through all six areas.
13-18 min
Write it down
In a notebook: their Holland code, one career from "Careers to explore" that looks good, and one that's a surprise.
18-30 min
Six corners
Students go to the sign for the first letter of their code. Anyone who'd rather not say can go to whichever area they're curious about. Each corner talks through questions 1 to 3 and shares one sentence.
30-40 min
Dig into one career
With a partner, pick one career and sketch out a typical day in it. Write three questions about it and where to look for answers, such as O*NET OnLine or someone who does the job.
40-45 min
Exit ticket
One line each: something I learned, something I'm curious about, something I'll try this month. The result's "Try this month" can help. Mention Career Quest as optional homework.

Discussion questions

1What about your code felt right? What didn't?
2Which of the six areas do the things you already enjoy fall into?
3Is what people say you're good at the same as what you enjoy?
4Did a career come up that you'd never heard of? What stood out?
5What does someone in that career actually do all day? How could you find out?
6What's the smallest thing you could try this month?

Make it fit your class

Not enough devices: assign the journey as homework and start class from what students wrote down.
Two periods: have students play Career Quest in between, then compare it with their Interest Profile.
Corners won't work in your room: skip them and talk through the questions at tables.

Before you run it

This is reflection, not a diagnosis or an aptitude verdict. Please don't use results to steer a student's path or put them in a student's record.
The careers shown are examples to explore, not conclusions. Career Quest's reading is written by AI, so teach students to check what it says.
The Interest Profile uses the public-domain RIASEC Marker scales. The Korean version hasn't been separately validated.
No group has run this plan yet. The timings are our estimate, built from how long each journey says it takes. If you try it, tell us what happened at hello@playskilltree.com

What the site asks students, and what it keeps

Taking the Interest Profile or Career Quest without an account, students are never asked for a name, email, school or age. That doesn't mean nothing is recorded, so here's all of it.

Answers: Scored in the browser and kept there so students can pick up where they left off. When a result opens, the answers are also sent once to our server to score and make a share link, and aren't stored.
Results: A share link holding scores and result titles is stored on our server, with no name or email. Anyone with the link can see that result, so it's worth a word about where students post it.
Career Quest: To write the reading, a student's choices in the story go to Anthropic's Claude model, with nothing that identifies them. A scrambled (hashed) form of the IP address is held briefly to enforce limits.
Visit counts: Vercel Web Analytics counts visits without cookies, and we keep anonymous tallies like "a quiz was finished."
If they sign in: Their email address and saved results are stored with Supabase in the United States. Signing in with Google also stores their name and profile picture with the account. Delete my tree under My tree permanently removes the account and saved results, though links already shared keep working.
If they join a group: Other members see the name they use in that group and the results they tick. Once three people share, those names and results go to Claude for the team reading. The name field starts with the part of their email before the @, so have students change it to a nickname.
Ads and links: No ads. Interest Profile and Career Quest results have no shop links, but some of the site's other just-for-fun quizzes have marked affiliate links. A donation note may appear under the Interest Profile result.

What's kept and how to delete it: the privacy page.

If you also want the team map

For a class, we'd start without this. The team map needs each student to sign in with a Google account or email, and shows results next to names to classmates. Students choose what to share, but it can be hard to say no in a classroom. If you use it, keep it optional and use nicknames.

1The day before, sign in, open My tree → Groups, create a group and post the invite link in your group chat. A group holds up to 30 people, you included, and one person can make up to 10 groups, so a larger gathering can split up.
2Everyone opens the link and signs in with Google or an email link. Opened inside a chat app's own browser, Google sign-in can fail; if it does, open the link in Chrome or Safari, or use the email link.
3Check the name field before joining. It comes filled in with the part of the email before the @, so ask people to change it to a first name or nickname.
4Take the journeys while signed in and each result saves on its own. Anything taken before signing in saves the next time that person opens My tree.
5On the group page, everyone ticks what to share under "What I share with this group" and taps Save. Joining shares nothing until they do.
6The team map appears once two people share the same journey, and it shows each person by name. "Present on a screen" turns it into slides for a projector or TV, ending with three questions to talk over.
7Once three people are sharing, Claude, an AI model, writes a team reading: strengths together, where you might rub, and one thing to try. Those names and results are sent to Anthropic to write it. It's rewritten each time what's shared changes, up to three times a day per group, so it can end up missing the last people to tick. If so, open the group the next day for a fresh one. This plan works without it.

Your next step

If you'd like to see the class together on one team map afterward, the groups page shows how. Teachers who want to try it with us can also apply to be a pilot group.

See SkillTree for groups →

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