Background
Macon-Piatt Regional Office of Education (ROE #39) serves 12 school districts across Macon and Piatt counties in central Illinois. On 16 April 2026, sixth grade students at Sangamon Valley Middle School in Illiopolis were given the opportunity to explore possible careers through VR headsets supplied by Workforce Investment Solutions Inc., a federally funded workforce development programme serving Macon and DeWitt counties.
The Deployment
Crystal Hoadley, a staff member with the Macon-Piatt ROE, helped students set up and use the headsets during the session. Students rotated through the headsets in small groups while classmates watched and reacted as each student experienced job simulations in first person. Career simulations included building a bridge and changing oil in a car, both rendered as fully immersive 6DoF VR environments.
One student, Ayden, was seen moving across the room, shaking his legs and turning in circles while in the headset — leading a classmate to ask if he was dancing. He was in fact immersed in a bridge-building simulation. He noted the experience gave him a new respect for the difficulty of hands-on trades.
Outcomes
The programme is designed to give middle school students a visceral first-person sense of what different jobs feel like before they make education and career pathway decisions, supporting the ROE's broader workforce development remit across its service area.
