CAREER CONNECTIONS' THEMES
EQUITY
Increasing Accessibility for All Students
Equity sessions address the role of educational equity in CTE strands. Equity is the educational policies, practices, and programs necessary to provide opportunities that eliminate discrimination and denial of services to students based on race, color, nationality, sex, gender, and disability. Equitable education can also reduce the predictability of which students succeed and which fail, interrupt reproductive practices that negatively impact diverse students in public, charter, and independent school settings, and cultivate the unique gifts and talents of every student (National Equity Project).
OUTREACH
Promoting Partnerships Between Schools and Communities
Outreach sessions provide the strategies and tools necessary to effectively promote Career and Technology Education as well as Career and College Readiness educational programs, build community support and partnerships, develop essential employability skills, and support individual learners.
INTEGRATION
Uniting CTE and Core Academic Courses
Integration sessions focus on integrating Career and Technology Education into core academics like Math, Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. Sessions in this strand incorporate an acknowledgment that 21st century education requires content areas to no longer exist in educational “silos” (i.e. the mindset that English solely deals with reading and writing or Social Studies only teaches about historical events). Integrating core academics with CTE courses might include the importance of embedding essential employability skills into core academic subjects or creating a career-specific coursework program for a high school student at the beginning of their freshman year.