Project-based learning offers an opportunity for students to work cooperatively over an extended period of time to solve complex, real-world problems or challenges. Through high-quality project-based learning, students develop critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills. However, for this type of learning experience to be successful, it requires thoughtful planning that intentionally embeds opportunities for students to take ownership, demonstrate responsibility, and reflect on their learning. Join us as we discuss the steps educators should take prior to implementing project-based learning in the classroom.

Teachers will learn how to identify the specific skill gap or personal barrier holding each student back from finding, keeping, and succeeding in a job after graduation. This session moves beyond generic workforce preparation to equip teachers with targeted approaches that meet each student where they are, turning individual weaknesses into a pathway for lasting employment success.

Using self-discovery, self-awareness, and reinforcement, this session equips teachers to help students develop foundational life principles that build a strong and dependable work ethic. Teachers will learn practical strategies for guiding students to identify their core values and align them with the expectations of the workplace, positioning graduates to find stability and success with employers who share those values.

Delivering Presentations can help students cultivate public speaking skills, develop a deeper comprehension of learned material and encourages active peer learning. In this session, participants will explore tips and strategies to help students develop proficient presentations, how to keep all students engaged during the while other students are presenting, and how to evaluate presentations effectively.

Prepare students for improvement cycles that they will encounter in life after high school. Learn how engaging in active cycles of student feedback (peer or teacher) can impact outcomes. Find new ways to add opportunities for reflection to your teaching and curriculum development.

In many classrooms, “thinking about thinking” — or metacognition — is limited to reflection or self-evaluation activities. However, metacognition plays a critical role in learning and skills application. In CTE, students must plan ahead, troubleshoot problems, monitor their progress, adapt to changing circumstances, and evaluate the quality of their work. In this interactive workshop, you will explore how thinking processes that often go unnoticed shape success in labs, shops, classrooms, and workplace settings. You’ll also discover how making them more visible can help students become more confident, independent, and adaptable learners.

In this workshop, you won’t just learn about metacognition. We’ll get meta by engaging in hands-on activities that demonstrate metacognitive strategies you can adapt for any CTE course. These simple exercises will encourage you to reflect on your own learning habits and instructional practices while exploring ways to help students plan, self-monitor, problem-solve, and learn from mistakes more effectively. Along the way, you’ll consider how making expert thinking more visible can improve access, engagement, and independence for diverse learners.

Learn how to align objectives, instruction, and assessment to ensure students master key concepts and skills.

Meet CTE Professionals in your area, engage in lively discussions, and learn a bit about improving your technical assessment data.

Discussion Topic: Improving Technical Assessment Data

The New York State Portrait of a Graduate identifies students as creative innovators who can generate ideas, solve problems, and transform their learning into meaningful solutions. In this engaging session, participants will explore ready-to-use resources and instructional strategies that help students apply the technical skills and content knowledge they are learning in CTE courses to real-world challenges and opportunities. From identifying problems to pitching innovative solutions, teachers will discover practical ways to foster creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial thinking in their classrooms. Participants will leave with resources and routines for providing students with opportunities to be creative innovators now and in the future.

Some students enter the classroom eager to participate in student discourse while others are more reluctant. In this session, time will be spent discussing the steps teachers can take to encourage more students to participant in rich student conversation during class. Strategies will be focused on ways to encourage all students to actively participate in classroom discussions, ways to promote student-to-student discourse, and tips to encourage students to utilize academic vocabulary during those discussions

The New York State Portrait of a Graduate identifies students as effective communicators who can clearly express ideas, actively listen, collaborate with others, and communicate with purpose across a variety of settings. In this engaging session, participants will explore practical strategies for strengthening students' speaking and listening skills in CTE classrooms. Drawing on her experience as a TEDx speaker coach and advisor to a TED-Ed Student Talks program, Jen Hesseltine will share five simple, high-impact shifts that help students build confidence, communicate effectively, and prepare for success in college, careers, and life. Participants will leave with ready-to-use ideas and resources they can immediately implement in their classrooms.

Each informal Zoom gathering will allow for updates from the CTE TAC, questions for Tracy and colleagues, sharing of ideas and best practices focused on the topics of interest by the group. At each session, we'll also review a CTE TAC wepage or resource that might be useful to you. All CTE leaders are welcome to participate.

Sharing & Discussion Topic: Literacy in CTE

The transition to full-time adult work can become discouraging fast for young people, and many abandon a promising career before it has a chance to develop. This session equips teachers to facilitate purpose-discovery conversations and activities that connect students' personal values and interests to their career direction, giving graduates the internal motivation to persist through the challenges of early working life and build something meaningful.

Using formative assessment strategies effectively can help teachers quickly understand where students have misunderstandings about content. In this session, we will explore various easy-to-implement formative assessment strategies. We will break down each strategy, show how to effectively implement it in the classroom and how to encourage all students to participate while utilizing it.

When implemented effectively, assessments provide an excellent opportunity for students to build important knowledge and real-world skills. In this workshop, we will examine how to use both formative and summative assessment practices during project-based learning to promote student growth, reflection, and ownership of learning. Emphasis will be placed on designing assessments that measure not only content knowledge, but also collaboration, communication, and adaptability. Participants will explore strategies to create a culture of excellence where students are empowered to set goals, monitor their progress, and demonstrate their learning in authentic ways.

The first few minutes of a lesson can set the tone for everything that follows. In this interactive workshop, participants will explore a variety of curiosity-driven hooks, questioning strategies, and engagement routines designed to capture student interest and spark critical thinking. Teachers will leave with new routines and resources for hooking students from the start of every lesson.

Students cannot improve what they do not understand. This workshop teaches educators how to introduce work readiness skills as technical vocabulary. Break down employability skills into specific look-fors in the lab, making implict expectations explicit in your teaching.

Each informal Zoom gathering will allow for updates from the CTE TAC, questions for Tracy and colleagues, sharing of ideas and best practices focused on the topics of interest by the group. At each session, we'll also review a CTE TAC wepage or resource that might be useful to you. All CTE leaders are welcome to participate.

Sharing & Discussion Topic: Personal Finance Best Practices 

Meet CTE Professionals in your area, engage in lively discussions, and learn a bit about Perkins Improvement Plans.

Discussion Topic: Perkins Improvement Plans

Providing students with meaningful choices can significantly increase engagement while fostering independence, ownership, and self-motivation. In this session, participants will explore practical ways to incorporate choice into their instruction through the use of choice boards. Teachers will receive ready-to-use choice board templates they can adapt for their own CTE classrooms, along with examples of how educators across content areas are using choice boards to personalize learning, increase student voice, and support diverse learners.