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Career and Technical Education Month
February is Career and Technical Education Month! The AFT is proud to celebrate our innovative educators who are dedicating their lives to making sure students have skills that will prepare them for a wide range of careers. CTE programs help foster student learning that is both concrete and abstract—skilled trades, applied sciences, technology to teamwork, critical thinking and collaboration. As a result, CTE is a viable and powerful option for students—both for those who want to work immediately after high school and for those who plan to pursue a two- or four-year postsecondary program.
In the News
As students continue to face the steep cost of college and inflation challenges family budgets, vocational education is becoming a more and more attractive pathway to a wide range of stable, engaging careers that can start immediately after high school graduation. In Germany, CTE—called vocational and education training, or VET—introduces students to a variety of vocations early so they can choose which is the best fit.
It was all about creating more equitable schools at the teachers’ divisional meeting July 14. Diving into the AFT’s work with community schools, career and technical education and the educator and school staff workforce shortage, the session shared concrete pathways to equity—and past the challenges that have recently plagued the teaching profession.
The pipeline to a more robust and diverse teacher workforce just became stronger since the AFT—in partnership with Montclair State University and Newark Public Schools—launched a new Teacher Education Academy. The high school program will educate and prepare students to return to their own communities to teach, enriching and diversifying their local educator workforce.