Global Competency in CTE

My district’s career center recently adopted a Project-Based Learning (PBL) platform for our Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses.  As a teacher coming from a special education and ESOL background, I knew that PBL was going to look different for many of my students who come from other countries, speak other languages, and in some cases, have had several years of interrupted education.  These students’ ideas of what is a problem, how it can be solved, and what resources are needed never fails to surprise me.  Many of my English Language Learners (ELL) have different perspectives on working in teams than their peers. These learners also bring different views on the division of labor, and often work under different cultural norms, depending on their backgrounds.  As a school, we are working to ensure that our CTE programs value and respect the diversity our students and staff bring to class every day.

In response to students, families and educators, the Virginia Department of Education developed a “Profile of a Virginia Graduate”, to better prepare all of our learners for the real world.  This profile includes curriculum and learning experiences that include content knowledge, career exploration, workplace skills, and community engagement and civic responsibility.  While this is a solid foundation for preparing our graduates, a gap exists between the profile and the expanding definitions of community and civic responsibility in our ever changing world.  CTE has the unique advantage of addressing all four of the Portrait’s domains, while also connecting them to the global workforce and economy.

The Asia Societies’ Center for Global Education has created the Global Competence Through CTE online course as an invaluable resource for educators starting to think about connecting what we do in the CTE classroom to international markets, policies, and practices.  With the Global CTE Toolkit’s standards crosswalks and grading rubrics, CTE content area teachers and I are connecting curriculum to build students’ understanding of four identified themes: Food Security, Clean Energy, Women’s Health, and Cybersecurity.  A project planning template on the site also introduces students to the basics of project management through guided practice in investigating the world, recognizing perspectives, communicating ideas, and taking action.  Using the Global CTE Toolkit’s four themes and project planning template, students are able to access project ideas, videos, and other resources on 16 different career pathways.  These pathway portals are each designed for students to explore their relationship to others in a global workforce.

This free course, and the accompanying suite of online resources, have helped my co-teachers and I to align our CTE programs with globally competent PBL. I look forward to watching how our students from every linguistic and cultural backgrounds adapt to learning about their career choices in global village, while also sharing the diversity they bring to our school and our community.

Michael Cruse is a special education and ELL resource teacher at the Arlington Career Center, in Arlington, VA.  He is a 2017-2018 Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Fellow, and is studying youth immigration and entrepreneurship in Israel, and the Middle East.

ACTE would like to acknowledge the generous sponsorship of PMIEF for the Global Competence Through CTE project.