Samantha Shane is a career and technical education teacher with the Morris County Vocational School District at the New Jersey School of Technology.
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What makes a student ready to graduate high school and face the “real world”?
What skills should students be equipped with when they enter careers?
These are some of the questions I ask myself as I plan curriculum for the courses I teach at a career and technical education (C.T.E.) high school. Students in C.T.E. programs focus on a specific industry, whether traditional vocational trades like automotive, carpentry, plumbing or cosmetology, or newer ones like biotechnology, education, engineering, business, design, computer science or hospitality.
According to a recent report, many schools across the country are considering “C.T.E. for all” models in which career exploration programs are offered in tandem with academic subjects like English and algebra. Proponents argue that combining work force and academic learning makes students more engaged and can help more young people graduate with industry-recognized certifications.
Why include The New York Times as you introduce your students to future careers? Because the paper is an endless source of material for helping students get ready for the world. And through The Learning Network, a free section of nytimes.com that helps people teach and learn with Times materials, you can find myriad practical and inspiring resources that will be relevant to your students and offer real-world opportunities for their voices and ideas.
The C.T.E. program I teach in focuses on preparing high school students to enter the field of education. Many of my students want to become teachers, school counselors or child therapists, and I look for opportunities for them to practice collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and professionalism.
Here are seven ways The Times helps me do that.
Keep Up With News You Can Use: Current Events in the C.T.E. Classroom
What’s happening in your C.T.E. field? How do those developments affect your curriculum? How might they affect your students’ futures in that trade?
No matter what subject you teach, you and your students can find interesting “news you can use” in The Times. You might challenge them to find news articles related to what you are studying; bring them to class to share; and, together, discuss the changes, challenges and opportunities for the future of work in that area.
For example, because my students are focused on careers related to schooling, we use The Times’s Education section as a primary resource for gathering information and developing informed perspectives. Here are a few pieces we have worked with:
I use this article on teaching phonics to introduce the ongoing debate around reading instruction in elementary schools and to provide my students with enough background knowledge to have informed discussions and plan projects on the topic.
We read this piece about how one teacher implemented problem-based learning with climate change standards so that my students can examine the dialogue between the teacher and her first-grade students to understand how someone might introduce such a large concept and guide students to solve a problem. After analyzing the article together, my students designed their own problem-based learning project using the work in the article as a model.
We also look at relevant pieces in the Opinion section, such as this series called “What Is School For?” Students pick an article to read and synthesize, and then create anchor charts that are later used for a gallery walk. After students comment, make connections and ask questions, they come away with a deep understanding of the various viewpoints people have about school and its purposes. They then write their own opinion essays on the topic.
But no matter what C.T.E. field you work in, you’ll find it covered in The Times. Check out sections like Tech, Business, Energy, Health, Travel and Food, or special features and columns like On Beauty, Your Money, Space and Astronomy, Transportation, Artificial Intelligence or Small Business to find pieces that can spark debate, inspire projects and connect classroom learning to advances and issues in your field.
For instance, a biotechnology or health care program might use recent articles like these:
Students in the construction trades might read pieces like these:
And, of course, there are skills that all our students need, whether they are in C.T.E. or academic programs, and Times sections like Smarter Living can help with those too. For instance:
Join the Conversation: Discussions Forums for Teens Around the World
Some high schools that once took a “college for all” approach are now guiding teenagers toward more choices. Do you think that is a good idea? What should schools do, in your opinion, to help students plan for their futures?
Those are questions The Learning Network recently asked students 13 and older as part of its daily Student Opinion series. Over 300 teenagers answered, and The Learning Network called out some of the best responses.
Every school day you can find a new question like this, each linked to a free, related Times article that helps give context. Teenagers around the world are invited to post responses, and to have conversations with other students. But even if your classes don’t share their thoughts publicly, the prompts are useful conversation-starters and can become jumping-off points for projects.
For instance, in 2024, in response to an article headlined “Hospitals Are Desperate for Workers. They Might Find Them in High Schools.,” The Learning Network asked students, “Is High School a Good Time to Train for a Career?” Your students might skim the 200-plus responses and formulate their own.
Here are more questions that might touch on topics you teach. Invite your students to hone their ideas and share their voices by joining the conversation!
Learn How to Focus: The 10-Minute Challenge
It is essential for C.T.E. students to learn the art of focusing. It is also essential to help them cultivate the “soft skills” that ensure our classrooms function as strong communities. One way to do both is to practice The Times’s 10 Minute Challenge, in which you look at one piece of art for 10 minutes, uninterrupted.
When I do this exercise in class, we first discuss what focus really looks like, what happens when we don’t focus, and how focus can help in our industry. Then, I warn my students that concentrating on a piece of art might feel awkward and boring at first, and we brainstorm ways to refocus in case we get distracted.
Then, I start with a complex image like the one above so students have plenty of details they can view and think about. At first, they were skeptical, and though they were carefully looking, their attention waned. But when they began to share their observations, the class started to understand how differently each student saw the picture. After a few months of practice with this activity, they could move to an image with fewer details. Next, to extend the exercise, I’ve taken my own pictures related to the education industry and asked them to go through the same process. Each student then sets a stopwatch on their phone and sees how long they can focus.
While this challenge doesn’t teach specific content, it does inspire useful discussions. My classes and I have had rich conversations about reflection, attention, critical thinking and creativity.
Explain “How to”: A Core Skill Across Industries
Being able to detail the steps in a process is a core skill: In your students’ future workplaces, they will almost certainly be asked to explain something to a group, recommend a course of action, or train others.
My students practice this skill using the free resources that The Learning Network developed for its “How-To” Informational Writing Contest in which students describe how to do any task in 400 words or fewer.
While you don’t need to have your students participate in the contest to use the related materials, if you are interested in authentic learning design, The Learning Network’s nine annual student contests can help streamline the process. Each contest centers on student voice and choice, and is supported by a comprehensive unit and lesson plans. Each also fosters critical thinking, real-world connections, and the development of skills vital for a range of future careers.
When we do this project, we start by reading and analyzing one of the many short pieces The Learning Network recommends. While we chose “How to Recommend a Book,” you can scroll through the Tip column to find pieces that fit your subject area, whether how to fix a brake light, put out a grease fire, design a bike lane or fill a pothole. After students understand the structure of these pieces, they pick a topic they’d like to explain to others that is drawn from our current unit of study, and use The Learning Network’s guide to write their own. Since my students are being trained for jobs in education, they might choose topics like “How to Write a Lesson Plan for Elementary Students” or “How to Incorporate Primary Sources.”
Of course, students in any C.T.E. program could do the same: A cosmetology student might write “How to Do an Everyday Makeup Look,” a plumbing student might explain “How to Fix a Leaky Faucet” and a hospitality student could write “How to Offer Excellent Customer Service.”
Evaluate Relevant Data and Information: Analyzing Charts and Graphs
Would you like your students to learn how to evaluate data, synthesize information, and make connections about information that is both relevant to them and to the industries they will enter?
The Learning Network features an interesting graph each week, and invites students to be part of a live-moderated conversation about it. But even if your students don’t participate in those conversations, the site keeps an updated archive of graphs by topic that makes it relatively easy for a C.T.E. teacher to find something applicable to use.
For example, I use the graph from 2019 that is embedded above when introducing different jobs in the field of education. After giving my students a few minutes to analyze it, I have them create a title for the graph and a description of what is happening in it. Then, I have students brainstorm which jobs are missing and where they might fall on the graph if they were added. Finally, we use sticky notes to add those jobs to the chart, and we discuss the impact of skills on different careers.
Activities like this help your students’ literacy, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving. And if they enjoy analyzing graphs, they may also like a related Learning Network feature, What’s Going On In This Picture?, in which students analyze images and practice finding evidence to support their claims.
Build Subject-Specific Vocabularies: Projects That Empower Students
I used to dread teaching vocabulary in class since presenting a word list and tasking students with finding definitions seemed outdated. But the Learning Network’s word field guide idea moves beyond traditional vocabulary instruction to encourage students to become masters of a chosen word and its real-world uses. It puts students in charge of their own learning, and builds discussion around language. And teachers can easily extend the activity by creating a gallery walk of a class’s complete field guides, challenging students to find connections and differences between the words, and brainstorming uses for them in their industry.
I’ve had students start their guides by choosing words from an article, and I’ve also had them find a word of a day on their own and connect it to the unit we are studying. For example, teachers in health fields might have students work with words like “immunocompromised,” “microorganism,” “sterilization,” “susceptible, “parasite” or “pathogen.” Students studying to be electricians might choose words like “voltage,” “resistance,” “current” or “conductor.”
To enhance instruction, I’ve used the Learning Network’s 15-Second Vocabulary Video Contest. Though that contest is no longer running, students can follow the materials that go along with it to choose a word, pronounce it correctly, identify its part of speech, and teach the word in a creative video — or live in class. To help your students get the idea, show them the work of past winners, or visit this compilation, which features 60 of the winning videos, organized into three categories by part of speech. (The “nouns” reel is embedded above.)
Learn With Podcasts: An Engaging and Accessible Means of Mastering Information
Podcasts are accessible and popular across generations, and making podcasts is one of my students’ favorite activities. Every spring The Learning Network runs a Student Podcast Contest, and, as with all its contests, offers many free resources to help, including a unit plan with lessons, model work, brainstorming activities and step-by-step guides. Whether your students submit or not, making their own podcasts is an engaging way for them to showcase their understanding of the topics they explore.
In addition, The Times hosts and recommends podcasts that touch on many C.T.E. fields. For students interested in technology, “Hard Fork” features journalists who explore and make sense of the latest in that rapidly changing world. Those in an animal science program might listen to The Times’s six-part “Animal” podcast as a model for effective and informative storytelling. After listening and taking notes on what they noticed about how professional podcasting works, students could produce their own, perhaps focusing on a local story or issue in the same field, or interviewing professionals in the area.
The Times also publishes a series that recommends excellent podcasts by theme. Here are some C.T.E.-friendly collections:
While the sheer volume of content on The Learning Network and in The Times can be overwhelming, here are the questions I ask myself as I choose:
Does this resource currently fit my standards and provide students with a real-world opportunity to make connections and learn?
What 21st-century skills does it allow my students to develop?
Does it provide choice, relevance or meaning to my students? How?
C.T.E. teachers have a unique opportunity to link what happens in school with the world beyond the classroom doors. Using these resources makes it easier to find ways to do that. If you use news — from The Times or anywhere else — in your classroom, please leave a comment and tell The Learning Network how!
