As the school year kicks off across the United States, educators are gearing up to welcome back learners and, likely, are looking for ways to freshen up their course content to better reach and engage their students.
For educators in the career and technical education (CTE) space, keeping students engaged must go hand-in-hand with ensuring that what and how students are learning today will prepare them for the workforce.
That workforce students are entering is increasingly global: today, one in 10 Americans is foreign born, and local communities—urban, suburban, and rural—are growing more diverse. With this context in mind, companies must hire workers with global competence, meaning, the ability to understand issues of global significance and to compete, connect, and cooperate on an international scale in the workplace.
Digital Promise has teamed up with educators and partners, including the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), to produce resources that equip CTE educators with the knowledge and tools to incorporate global competence education into their courses.
Below are a few resources that educators can leverage to both boost their own knowledge and skills in the area of global competence and to encourage students to do the same as they prepare for the coming school year.
Are you interested in integrating global competence into your lesson planning, but not sure where to start? Check out these curated tips and resources, including steps for integrating global projects into your existing instructional plans, the “do’s and don’ts” of facilitating a global project, project planning templates to guide your own global CTE project, and more.
Do you want to center your course around a global topic area? Add a project around a UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)—from gender equality to climate action—using these sample project plans that are geared toward specific SDGs and are aligned to 21st century skills and CTE standards.
Get your students up to speed on the concept of global competence through these online training modules. Each of the free, self-paced modules are 15-20 minutes long and cover topics such as defining global competence, utilizing global skills on the job and in the community, and articulating these skills in job interviews. Students who successfully complete the modules are eligible to receive a certificate of completion.
The Global Readiness Examples and Topics (GREAT) tool provides detailed examples of how global career readiness is important for every CTE field. Find your field and explore examples of how global skills are used on the job, as well as discussion starters and project ideas that you can immediately use in your courses.
Looking for more resources around Career and Technical Education (CTE)? Check out these other free tools:
