Unless you are teaching a CTE course that also gives students a math credit, you are not expected to be a math expert. You are a teacher of math-in-CTE. If you are having difficulty recognizing the embedded math concepts in your curriculum or understanding the related traditional math concepts and processes, reach out to the math teachers at your campus for help. Most math teachers are more than happy to share their love and knowledge of math with others!

Your integration process should include working with math teachers to develop a curriculum map for integrating math into your CTE course. The goal is to introduce math concepts at the same time they are being covered in the math course. Partnering with the math teachers can help you map your curriculum to theirs.

Research shows that this collaboration results in improved math skills while gaining the technical skills taught in the CTE course.

After one year of exposure to the math-enhanced lessons, students in the classrooms of teachers trained in the Math-in-CTE model performed significantly better on standardized math tests and community college math placement tests than students who received the regular CTE curriculum. Moreover, students improved their math skills without losing the important technical skills needed for college and career readiness.

Source: NRCCTE

If you are a CTE teacher, it is important to collaborate with  employers and other industry partners to identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that involve math needed for occupations in the career cluster you teach. Integrating authentic math into the CTE course makes students’ learning relevant and useful for using math in the  context of their career. It is also important to engage community and industry partners in the learning and assessment processes to ensure that the content includes the authentic industry-related math skills and knowledge needed to succeed.

Research the local employers in your community and reach out to those related to your CTE program to see if you can work together to provide training that students need to be valuable to employers in their field of interest. This benefits the students as well as the employers.

All  CTE courses include essential elements of work-based learning (WBL) along the continuum. The WBL activities and assignments  provide students with authentic work experiences where they can apply academic and technical skills learned in the classroom and develop employability skills. Working with employers, CTE teachers develop curriculum to prepare students for work. For capstone courses, i.e., practicum courses, the classroom instruction should align with the work experiences students engage in while at a field site.