Students teaching students. Science made visible. Futures redefined.
CTE students go into classrooms — and teach real science.
The CTE Teach-In is the CTE Science Alliance's flagship public engagement program. In each event, high school and postsecondary CTE students — future process technicians, welders, electricians, builders, and health care workers — visit an elementary or middle school classroom and teach a hands-on applied science lesson they've designed themselves.
The best way to show that CTE is serious applied science is to let the students doing it teach it to someone else.
Each event runs about an hour. CTE students arrive with a lesson plan, materials, and the scientific knowledge to back it up. They lead a hands‑on activity that makes an applied science concept tangible and exciting — the kind that makes a ten-year-old go home and explain thermodynamics to their parents.
Recognition, measurement, and family follow-up.
The hour in the classroom is only part of the story. CTE students receive formal certificates they can add to academic and professional portfolios, recognizing them as science educators, not just learners. Host teachers complete a brief survey on their likelihood of incorporating more applied science in future lessons — giving the initiative concrete, measurable evidence of its impact. And every student takes home parent‑facing materials that recap the experiment and lesson, so the CTE and science conversation continues at home, around the dinner table, where perception actually changes.
Applied science you can hold.
Electrical students guide a class through building a simple circuit to explore electron flow and conductivity. Construction students run a bridge‑building load challenge to explain tension and compression. Welding and process technology students demonstrate metallurgy, electromagnetic fields, density, and miscibility. Every lesson is drawn directly from the CTE students' own coursework — the same science they apply every day, translated into an experience a second, fifth, or seventh grader can engage with immediately. These are real scientific concepts, taught by people who use them.
What every Teach-In does.
Four things happen at every Teach-In. CTE students deepen their expertise and identity by teaching what they know — and leave with recognition to prove it. Younger students see futures they may never have imagined, taught by someone who looks like their future self. Teachers see CTE differently as they watch students explain concepts like load distribution or electron flow with confidence. And communities see CTE differently too, through earned media and local storytelling that no poster campaign can match.
Want to bring a CTE Teach-In to your community?
