CTE Success

Student Arislerdy Fernandez described how she greets patients, logs them into the medical office where she interns and checks their clinical records, working directly with healthcare professionals. “The internship allows us to really experience what we want to do before we go into the real world,” she says.

Joshua Gonzalez is excited to make connections between his internship with physical therapists at a neuro-physical clinic, and his high school anatomy and physiology class. “I’m starting to feel more fulfilled with the work that I’m doing because … whenever I walk into that clinic, I just know that this is what I’m working toward.”

Hillary MacDonald says she didn’t like studying and when she thought about high school graduation, she didn’t know what she would do with herself. Then she took an internship at a hospital and everything changed. “It made me [think] OK, let’s study so that I can do this, or so that I can be this,” she says. Now she’s called “little doctor” at home, and family members ask her about their ailments. Instead of telling her it will take too long to become a doctor, they tell her, “oh, you got this.”

These are just three of the students enrolled in the Innovation Pathways Program, where young people can explore careers in critical industries in our community: computer science, healthcare, and business and finance. The program’s popularity is growing, with enrollment expected to reach approximately 350 students for the 2025–26 school year.

I’m proud of my union, the Lawrence Teachers’ Union, for its dedication to supporting our work and our students. It was an honor to welcome the national union and state union to Lawrence to hear from local educators and our students directly about how transformative this program has been and about the new experiences they’ve been afforded inside and outside the classroom.

The AFT and AFT Massachusetts are working to seed and expand CTE opportunities for all students. They understand just how much our kids can thrive when given relevant and engaging learning opportunities. Every student in America should have access to the kind of engaging, transformational programs Arislerdy, Joshua and Hillary have enjoyed.

President Weingarten recently wrote an essay for the New York Times about how programs like ours are an important part of creating multiple pathways to a better life — whether students decide to attend college after graduation or pursue other options.

Programs like this don’t just provide relevant and engaging skills to future medical professionals, HVAC technicians, accountants, nurses or electricians. They also teach students invaluable skills like communication, collaboration, creative problem-solving and critical thinking — the kinds of skills so often overlooked when we talk about how to be prepared for life and a career.

There are many programs like ours across the state and country. The AFT has a large collection of examples on its CTE webpage, showing how these schools and programs are helping students learn and grow, giving them a head start on all kinds of careers, from graphic design to farming, piloting, nursing, microtechnology and more. The union has deep-dive resources about the benefits of CTE in its education journal, American Educator, and another article provides a good look at how leaders, members and partners are pursuing this work.

I’m proud to be part of a union — at the local, state and national levels — that supports such a powerful pathway to learning, and that supports members who want to join me in growing career and technical education for our kids.

Maureen Santiago is a CTE teacher and a member of the Lawrence Teachers Union, Local 1019, and AFT Massachusetts.

Republished with permission from AFT Voices.