The CTE team launched the Work-Based Learning (WBL) Institute, a series of monthly professional development opportunities for school teams of WBL coordinators, teachers and employer partners to create and sustain strong partnerships to deliver valuable WBL experiences for students. The Institute workshops are tailored to the needs of CTE programs and are specifically focused on engaging students from special populations in WBLguiding school staff to review and re-think school-based systems and structures to implement high quality WBL experiences for all student learners. Workshops were designed in collaboration with DOE’s Division of Multilingual Language Learners and Division of Specialized Instruction and Student Support to integrate strategies to support special populations. Topics range from building school capacity for WBL to strategies to support diverse learners within the workplace, and focus on strengthening activity design and school roles for greater participation and outcomes for students as well as planning with the incorporation of guidance from NYSED.

In addition to session recordings, every workshop provides participants with online resources and ready-to-use templates that they may adapt for their own school use.  The CTE WBL team will also deliver weekly coaching intensives for targeted individuals and/or school teams that will prioritize schools that are experiencing significant challenges as well as those that self-identify specific special populations groups whose CTE performance they are committed to improving.  The CTE team will also continue to build its growing online library of training modules, tools, and guides based on content from the WBL Institute.

Through these efforts, the CTE team will have a stronger knowledge base of schools’ WBL capacities and needs to set and implement recruitment targets for special populations participating in centrally developed WBL programming such as Industry Scholars, Workplace Challenges, CTE Summer Scholars, and Industry Scholars Summer Youth Employment Program