Making Academic Content Relevant to Career-Tech Students

By Katie Maciulewicz, Instructional Design Coach

Teachers know and understand the importance of differentiation in the classroom. We provide multiple ways for students to interact with learning materials, give students assessment options, and create leveled texts to make reading more accessible.

But when it comes to career-technical education, there are even more opportunities for teachers to tailor their instruction to students’ interests and future goals by connecting learning from academic courses (English, Math, Science, Social Studies) to students’ career-tech courses.

I’m an instructional coach in a career-tech school. This gives me the incredible opportunity to see inside every classroom in the school building. The examples I provide here are all real ways I have seen teachers connect course material to what students are learning about in their CT labs.

Differentiating with Math Word Problems

One of the best examples of differentiation I’ve seen in a math classroom was actually pretty simple, thanks to AI. A math instructor was teaching systems of equations in her algebra class, and she wanted the students to understand what this math means in the real world — so she tied the concept to students’ labs.

Using generative AI for support, she created word problems that asked students to compare two possible situations and determine which was the most cost-effective or profitable. For example, students in the Early Childhood Education class were asked to determine what combination of part-time and full-time students would be most profitable. Students in Cosmetology had to compare two different hairstyling services. They then had to create the equation that represented each situation, graph it, and explain which choice was better and why.

Improving Public Speaking Skills with How-To Presentations

Public speaking is a vital skill, but it often feels like an afterthought in the classroom. But once again, if we can find a way to tie the skill to students’ interests outside of the academic classroom, we can make this skill relevant (and potentially more fun).

The problem with public speaking assignments is that we’re often asking students to present something they just learned about and don’t really know all that well. It’s not really an authentic assessment of their ability to speak in front of a group. In the real world, professionals present information they know well and have spent a lot of time with. We can easily apply this same concept in a CT school by requiring students to present something about their lab.

One of the English teachers I work with did just that. Her assignment required students to give a how-to presentation in which they demonstrated a skill they had learned in their CT class. Students loved the assignment because they felt comfortable with it and they could show off their skills to their classmates while also learning about what happens in the other CT programs.

Health Tech students showed things like how to insert an IV (I actually saw a student walking down the hall with a fake arm and an IV hanger. It was a little alarming for a moment). An Auto Tech student made a video demonstrating how to change the oil in a car and then explained the process in class along with the video. Culinary Arts students showed how to pipe icing on a cupcake and then shared the food with their class — always a winner.

This assignment allowed students to relax a little as they stood in front of the class, which in turn allowed them to truly shine and produce incredible presentations.

Real-World Research Papers

When I was a high school English teacher, one of my favorite essay topics to assign to seniors was one that required them to research potential colleges, majors, or careers and then evaluate and compare their options. This would be a paper assigned in the fall semester when students were visiting colleges and considering all of these choices anyway.

This same concept is easily applied in the CT space. If students are in a program in which post-secondary education is necessary, they can research college options. If the lab is one in which they graduate fully certified, students can look into possible career choices — residential vs. commercial construction, for example — or students could research local companies to decide where to apply.

No matter what kind of research students are doing, this assignment still requires all the typical research paper skills like citing sources, a clear thesis, and strong organization, but it also ties these skills to the real world and shows students how strong research skills can help them make tough life decisions.

Creative Warm-Up and Exit Tickets

This last example can truly apply to any course and is so low-prep for the instructor that it’s almost no-prep!

If your class requires students to do something specific when they come into the room (a bellringer, do now, or warm-up), use that to your advantage. Every now and then, ask students to write about what they’ve been learning about or working on in their CT courses. This will give you valuable insight into what happens in those classes and make it easier for you to connect your content to the CT content.

On the flip side, you can make the students do the thinking. As your exit ticket at the end of class, ask students to connect your course content or the day’s lesson to their CT course. Why is it important information for them to know or understand for them to be successful in their careers? Why would a student in the culinary arts class need to understand chemical reactions? Why does an auto tech student need to understand geometry and angles? Asking these questions can also prevent students from asking the dreaded, “When will I ever need to know this?”

I’ve worked in almost every possible school environment — private, public, charter, university — but the career-tech space is truly a unique learning environment. (And not just because I can get my nails done, my tires rotated, and free gourmet lunch all in one place). Students at a CT school have already begun to make real plans for their futures at fifteen years old! But they’re also often students who would much rather be in that CT lab than in your English or American Government class. With very little effort, you can bridge that gap and increase student success.

Formerly a secondary English teacher, Katie is an instructional coach in a career-tech high school as well as the Content and Communication Coordinator for the EDU Coach Network, an online community for instructional coaches and school leaders.

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