Our golden goose to solve the historically low attendance, engagement, and achievement rates our students have plummeted to is facing implementation at a snail's pace.
Career and technical education (CTE) programs have been named a front-runner in re-engaging learners and boosting achievement, according to education reformers calling for innovative strategies.
Maybe it’s the early exposure to job markets that helps students create better-informed decisions about their future. Or the enhanced student motivation that can flourish once they understand how school connects to career prospects. As exciting as CTE programs sound, the majority of students don’t get to experience them. About 25 percent of students are enrolled in CTE programs nationwide.
The majority of our budding learners shouldn’t miss out on the chance to explore inspiring career pathways because they don’t have access to structured exposure during the school day.
If only we could create a CTE-like curriculum that
Bypasses the approval hoopla freezing schools and districts from implementation.
Matches up with a learning practice more traditionally accepted to improve student engagement and achievement: Tutoring.
Career-connected tutoring, while not a renowned practice yet, could become a lower-stakes wedge or complement to a CTE curriculum, reigniting the learning spark in our nation’s students and solving some of their biggest threats to success.
A shorter route to connect students with career pathways
About 59 percent of public schools offer standard tutoring services. Fusing career-connected learning into the tutoring experience would allow students, especially those who don’t have access to a CTE curriculum, to explore career pathways.
Tutoring, chiefly one-on-one, provides students with an experience that can transcend improving academic performance alone. When tutor-student relationships form, natural conversations can emerge, revealing the student’s interests and dreams.
A career-connected tutoring experience could provide tutors with the tools to drive connections between interests and schoolwork, in a way that’s structured, not a side conversation. Imagine the chain of learning events that includes sharing:
How schoolwork connects with inspiring career pathways
What skills are needed to break into careers of interest
How to upskill and advance at work
We don’t have to start from square one to develop those connections, thanks to the National Career Clusters Framework.
Advance CTE, the non-profit that designed the clusters, has dedicated over 100 years to developing high-quality policies, programs, and pathways to make college and career success available for every student.
A curriculum to boost the schoolwork-to-career connection
As a Gen Zer, it wasn’t too long ago that I was completing middle and high school writing assignments. Even though I enjoyed this subject the most, my interest doesn’t compare to the enthusiasm I feel when I get to write today, as a product marketer.
I chalk my increase in passion up to two critiques from my school days: having only a mild interest in the writing assignment topics, and not feeling connected to my audience. While I knew my teacher would end up grading my work, I didn’t consider channeling their energy into my writing process. I was typing into the void.
Consider a 10th-grade student who has an upcoming assignment to write a persuasive essay. Through a career interest diagnostic provided by their tutor, the student was matched with a few interests, including public policy-making, journalism, and marketing. They selected to dive deeper into the latter this semester.
Career-connected tutoring in practice
Here’s a formula for how a student can connect their school writing class and assignments, like that essay, to a career in marketing.
Weekly one-on-one meetings with a tutor.
In a synchronous, traditional tutoring setting, the student works through schoolwork roadblocks with a human champion to help troubleshoot and strengthen career connections made during independent exploration.
Between sessions: Independently explore inspiring careers.
Bridge the gap between school and career terminology through a digital, instructional pathway inspired by Duolingo and the National Career Clusters.
Use gamified exercises like multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank exercises, and point-system rewards to let the student connect their writing class essays, book reports, and teacher audience to a marketing professional’s briefs, whitepapers, and industry audience.
Connecting low-stakes exploration to the brass tacks of completing schoolwork can inspire students to cross the finish line, with the vision of what their writing could become.
With the homework-to-career connection in mind, students can look forward to entering school to learn more.
Showing up “to work” can reduce absenteeism
Simply attending school gives students a greater chance to build social capital. Once they’re in the building, if properly motivated by school-connected prospects, career-connected learning can reduce dropout rates.
On a day-to-day basis, this could mean equipping students with the curriculum and intrinsic motivation to make these connections, create steady lesson engagement, and stay physically present in the classroom.
Revamping the tutoring experience is a small step that has the potential to make a major change. To the majority of students across the country who lack access to a CTE curriculum, exploring career pathways through tutoring could be the difference between thinking about careers before graduation, or lacking the motivation to get in the door each day.
Invest in career-connected tutoring, now
National access to a CTE curriculum is a long-term goal. Career-connected tutoring ensures that students right now don’t get left behind by a slow-moving policy.
We already know that learning isn’t one-size-fits-all and educators are desperate to engage students. The long-term effects of poor education are emerging, from lower graduation rates to unemployment and reduced lifetime earning potential.
We don’t need to wait for a school curriculum to connect students with potential career paths. Advance CTE has existing curriculum-to-career guidelines and we can look forward to a revamp of their framework this year. (Over the past summer, the nonprofit called on the CTE community to provide feedback on the proposed updated career clusters.)
Until career-connected tutoring ventures lift off, it will take innovative approaches from tutors to get to know their students’ interests and make those schoolwork-to-career connections.
The elements of this type of career-connected learning already exist. It’s time to cut through the middle man to expose more kids to more careers, quicker. But let’s start calling out what it is: career-connected tutoring.