| By Aimee Heavener |
Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers fill a critical role in schools and the surrounding community. By providing meaningful lessons and practical experiences for students, CTE educators are preparing young learners for successful careers across a variety of industries. As a former high school CTE teacher, I know firsthand how important it is to find quality resources to support career and technical education. Since I joined the team at Gale, I’m proud to connect my former colleagues to the digital solutions they need from behind the scenes.
There’s a lot to celebrate in February. In addition to Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day, Black History Month observances, and a national spotlight on heart health, February is also a time to raise awareness for CTE and recognize those committed to readying young learners for career success. This February, I want to highlight the important work of CTE professionals and share some of the valuable resources Gale offers to support them. Hopefully, these tools will help make lesson planning a little easier for hardworking teachers.
Gale supports CTE educators by providing reliable and up-to-date supplemental curricula, including ready-made lesson plans and professional teaching tips—all designed to enhance instruction and increase student engagement.
Discover Databases That Inspire Career-Based Learning
Here are a few of my favorite Gale resources to help increase your students’ career readiness and professional skills.
Gale Presents: Imago
As a marketing teacher and DECA advisor, I traveled to annual regional, state, and international competitions with my students. I would spend countless hours preparing my students using lessons I created or scoured the web to find. It wasn’t until I joined Gale that I realized I could have saved myself so much valuable time and reduced my stress by using lessons found in Gale Presents: Imago. The lessons about business etiquette would have been invaluable to me and my colleagues as we prepared our students for interactions with guest speakers and CTSO (Career and Technical Student Organization) competitions. Gale Presents: Imago focuses its lessons on three critical areas: career readiness, soft skills, and social and emotional learning (SEL). The curriculum is presented in a video-based format, making these lessons both accessible and engaging.
Gale Presents: Peterson’s Test and Career Prep
As a CTE educator, I encouraged my students to learn about different types of careers and explore which professions might be a good fit for their skills and personal interests. Peterson’s Test and Career Prep is an excellent supplemental resource designed to help your high schoolers prepare for life after graduation with tools for career exploration, resume-building, and even standardized test prep.
ChiltonLibrary
ChiltonLibrary is a standalone database that specifically supports automotive technology programs. You and your students can access maintenance and service information for today’s vehicles via a digital library that’s available 24/7. Find a substantial collection of how-to videos, schematics, diagnostic information, and even quizzes that help your students prepare for the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) certification tests.
Gale Health and Wellness
For students hoping to pursue a career in the healthcare industry, Gale Health and Wellness ensures that your young learners have access to up-to-date, vetted medical information. Featuring millions of articles, videos, images, and audio files, your students will discover digital content that caters to their specific learning styles. Covering topics like diseases, drugs, diagnostics, therapies, treatments, and surgeries, this resource is curated with all types of researchers in mind.
Gale eBooks
Gale eBooks is a digital library that streamlines the research process. It’s easy to find content on different career paths, workplace readiness skills, and other essential material for CTE learning. Students will spend less time combing through search results because the search fields in Gale eBooks help identify exactly what they need. They can even refine their query by reading level or take advantage of Gale’s built-in translations.
Gale OneFile
Once your students begin to identify the career field in which they are most interested, Gale OneFile helps direct them to current trends in each industry. I used to assign my students a career research project, and Gale OneFile would have made the assignment so much easier for everyone. With millions of up-to-date articles across a range of occupations, Gale’s intuitive search platform mimics a traditional internet search, but teachers can feel confident in the accuracy of the results that students receive.
Elevate Your CTE Lessons
Gale In Context: For Educators will be your new best friend. In the platform, educators can find ready-made lesson plans for different career paths to support their CTE units.
To give busy teachers even more support, Gale eBooks: Professional Learning collections provide applicable teaching tips and best practices. If you’re new to Gale products or want to capitalize on Gale’s user-friendly workflows and features, check out our CTE tip sheet and other helpful training resources.
I know firsthand the challenges that the pandemic added to the already demanding job of educating, having taught from 2017 through 2022. Even though I’m no longer working in the classroom, I’m dedicated to improving learning for students in all areas of CTE and supporting the hardworking educators who are making a difference in their communities every day.
Want to get more support for CTE? Learn more about Gale’s digital resources or contact your rep for more information.
About the Author
Aimee has taught gymnastics to preschoolers, personal finance to adults, and marketing to high schoolers. She is now dedicated to supporting educators through her work at Gale. In her free time, she likes to hassle her three teenage children and spoil her three rescue dogs.