1. Connecting Academics into Career and Technical Education Presented by: Travis Ridley Colonial Heights High School

2. Problems ► Preparing students for the Workforce ► Providing students with technical literacy ► Providing 21 st century skills across the board “The United States does not face a worker shortage, but a skills shortage.” Source: U.S. Department of Labor: Futurework: Trends and Challenges for the 21 st Century,

3. Integrating Academic and CTE Content

4. Why the need to Integrate ► To help meet student demand for training ► To help meet short term labor market demand for trained workers ► To help meet long-term strategic goals for human resources and economic development

5. What We Know ► ► To help all students reach common, high standards, the one-size-fits-all approach of today’s high school must yield to a system that presumes students will learn through different pedagogies, institutional arrangements, and amounts of time... ► ► We must provide students with multiple learning options and pathways and varied lengths of time

6. What We Know “CTE courses inherently provide contexts for applied or experiential learning... delivery of content area curricula within a relevant, authentic, and presumably more motivating context... the creation of explicit connections between situations is critical if students are to transfer their knowledge and skills outside the classroom, whether it is to another context or to an abstract testing situation.” Stone et al. (2006)

7. CTE Trends ► Academic/CTE integration ► Career clusters ► Secondary/postsecondary articulation ► High tech ► Rigorous academic & technical skills

9. Technical Literacy ► Read, understand, and communicate in the language of a career field ► Understand technical concepts and principles ► Use academic knowledge and skills to solve problems ► Use basic technology

10. Integrating 21 st Century Skills ► Essential “21st century” knowledge and skills are not the focus of traditional academic courses:  Professionalism/work ethic  Oral and written communications  Teamwork/collaboration  Critical thinking/problem solving Are They Really Ready to Work? (2006)

11. Integrated 21 st Century Curriculum: 21 st Century Skills and Content  Communication skills  Thinking and problem-solving skills  Creativity and innovation skills  Collaboration skills  Interpersonal and self-directional skills  Information and communications technology (ICT) skills  21st century content (e.g., global awareness, financial literacy, civic literacy, health and wellness awareness) Partnership for 21st Century Skills

12. College-Prep, Career-Related Curriculum Small-Learning Community CareerAcademy Partnerships with Employers, Community, and Higher Education Definition of Career Academies

13. Benefits of Academic and CTE Teacher Partnerships ► Academic teachers learn contextual applications which allows them to engage all their students ► CTE teachers demonstrate how their programs contribute to student academic achievement ► CTE no longer seen as an alternative to postsecondary education but an achievable goal for all high school students ► Partnership brings relief from high-stress testing environment

14. Professional Development to Support Integration: Lessons Learned ► Common goal(s) ► Understanding of how this will benefit both teachers (and not just the students) ► View of integration of academics as an enhancement and not a threat to what teachers already do ► Maintenance of the integrity of the CTE curriculum so the academics emerge from the existing curriculum and are not superimposed onto it ► Teacher discretion in choosing their partner ► A true partnership (neither teacher is subjugated by the other) ► Proximity and accessibility ► Support from administration

15. In conclusion we must... ► Prepare students for full-time employment ► Have strategies for teaching academics ► Eliminate in favor of a common academic program for all students ► Provide an occupational sequence integrated with rigorous academic coursework