Toolkit
Relevant Resources
Students experience “relatedness” with their teachers and a learning relevant to their lives through direct connections to their community, their country and the world and an appreciation of diverse cultural experiences.
Relevancy Toolkit
Making education relevant to the lives of students today ensures that students find meaning in their education, empathy in their work, and power in their ability to make their world a better place.
This Relevancy Toolkit was developed for career and technical education (CTE) administrators or staff and other school or district leadership that want to improve the enrollment, participation, and completion of students, particularly those that may be underrepresented by gender or race, in CTE programs.
Research has shown that programs that attract and provide service learning opportunities that are relevant to a diversity of students will benefit all students as evidenced through the achievement of higher academic outcomes, regardless of their the socioeconomic status (SES) or grade level. In fact, the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students who had longer exposure to relevant service-learning declined.
Further, this research tells us that if implemented well, a program such as the one this toolkit was created for will help to:
Encourage more underrepresented or marginalized students to prepare for careers and become leaders in programs that are nontraditional by gender or race.
Communicate information related to the richness, breadth, and importance of diverse student’s participation and completion to college and careers in CTE and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education broadly.
Foster research and practice supporting the creation of equitable learning environments that will ensure students’ academic success leading to entry into the workforce in highdemand technical fields.
Videos
Kate finds her career interest in plumbing because of a trip provided through her school to a natural disaster area. She and other high school students are elected to travel to an area in aid of need. While there Kate makes new friends, learns about her gifts and talents, and finds a career area she decides to pursue.
Kate Washington
Javier Barrera
Javier's life experiences convince him that a nursing field is right for him. His sister is a nurse, and he meets role models that encourage him to consider medical practice. Ultimately he decides to enter the career because of the need in his community for qualified Spanish speakers that can really help people in a medical crises. Commonwealth Career and Technology Center does a great job helping him gain medical experience by volunteering at a Covid-19 site. By translating for the the doctors and nurses, he learns both processes and protocols for medical practice now. The medical professionals all treat him well and appreciate his work, and that is exciting!
Building Effective Learning Environments: Relevant
This is the final video in the Professional Experience series on creating Effective Learning Environments in Career and Technical Education (CTE). This video focuses on two important ideas: ensuring your team of educators have the capacity and commitment to ensure effective learning environments are accessible for all STEM students and to learn about the fourth indicator of the NEIR model: Normalize.
Shared Effective Practices
Relevant STEM Education Activities
We invite educators to share their effective practices with us by filling out the form below—your valuable resources may be showcased on our webpage to inspire and support fellow educators.
Suggested Sites
The following websites support STEM/CTE administrators, faculty/teachers, and counselors (educators) in serving their students. They provide tools and resources for educators at low or no cost and have been vetted for quality by education practitioners on behalf of the SEI.
SEI accepts no and receives no remuneration or direct benefit for identifying these websites or their resources for educators.
If you would like to share a website that supports teachers creating effective learning environments, please fill out the form below.