Make it relevant to the learner, not to the teacher.

It isn’t rocket science.

If your school receives funds through the Carl Perkins program, you are required to have advisory committees to serve as a bridge between your school and the workplaces you are preparing students for.

Rather than have the minimum number of required meetings per year where you talk about how great your career tech programs are with the good old boys who have been on the committee for years with the primary purpose of not changing much, try this.

Expand the meetings. Instead of the career tech staff meeting with the workplace representatives, have the department heads meet with them. Have the department heads define and clarify their content standards to the workplace reps. Then let the workplace reps describe how each standard is actually used, or not, in their particular industry.

If it isn’t used, please don’t waste time teaching it.

If it is used, you have some amazing ideas for cross content area performance tasks that are quite relevant to the learners.

We all know that the the various required assessments miss the mark when preparing students for life after graduation. The world really doesn’t care as much about how much you know as it cares about how you apply what you know.

Let’s make it relevant for them and they will amaze us with how they apply what they know.

And so it goes…