This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.

Earlier this year, I went to Career Day at my older kid’s school. The experience was sometimes humbling — at an elementary school career fair, no one can compete with the firefighters — but it was also incredibly joyful. Hearing from kids about what they want to be when they grow up can be a balm for anxious times.

Adults may be fearful for the future, kids are still dreaming and planning, figuring out the place they’re going to inhabit in a world that’s constantly changing. Yes, kids today will come of age in a time of climate change, war, and democratic backsliding — but they’re also going to create new art, invent new technologies, and pioneer new policies that will make the world better and richer in ways we can’t even imagine yet.

With all this in mind, I asked a few kids — including some of the Scholastic Kid Reporters who have helped me out in the past — to tell me what they want to be when they grow up, and what changes they hope to see in the world. A selection of their responses, which have been condensed and edited, are below. If the kids in your life would like to weigh in too, you can reach me at anna.north@vox.com.

I want to be a gymnastics teacher. I want to get married and have kids, maybe five. I want to go to France. I want to do ballet in France.

I want to do anything I want. I want more kittens on the planet. I want everyone to have their own house with their own family. I want self-driving lawnmowers. I don’t want people to eat chickens, who should be treated like a princess.

—Mairead, age 8

During Covid, our math and science teacher would show us these videos about space. Those videos really inspired me. The idea that there might be life other than planet Earth was just really cool to me. Our universe is so big, there’s so many places to explore, so many new things to learn.

[As a Scholastic Kid Reporter, I wrote a story] about the total........

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