School-to-Work Curriculum Guide Overview

Following the success of the Resource Guide (1998), a comprehensive School-to-Work manual that included learning objectives, best practice guidelines, descriptions of model programs, resources for twenty-two school-to-work activities, a directory of employer partners, and appendices containing the STW Opportunities Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and risk management and insurance guidelines. The School-to-Work Curriculum Guide was created as a supplement to support implementation. The Curriculum Guide provides examples demonstrating how the principles and strategies presented in the Resource Guide have been applied by educators and employers in the Lake Champlain Region.

The goals in publishing this supplemental guide are:

To recognize and disseminate creative, educationally sound school-to-work curricula developed and implemented in the Lake Champlain Region of Vermont;
To demonstrate the variety of ways School-to-Work Best Practices can be employed to develop sound, standards-based curriculum;
To illustrate how educators and employers use the Lake Champlain Regional STW Resource Guide to collaborate and to develop and enhance curriculum;
To provide access to STW activities for all students by documenting ideas, models, exemplars, assessment tools, and resources which other educators may use, adapt, or take inspiration from.

The Curriculum Guide is organized in three sections:

Part I, Units, contains the fully developed units that grew from the Lake Champlain School-to-Work Collaborative's grants program. Student exemplars are differentiated from adult-created materials by the use of a Kid's Font.

Part II, Plans & Stories, contains a series of initiatives developed in response to a mini-incentive grant offered by the Collaborative to encourage teachers to use the STW Resource Guide. After exploring the Guide, teachers were asked to submit a plan for using one of the STW activities in their classroom, and a brief story recounting how the plan worked in their classroom.

Part III, Linking Learning to Life, contains curriculum outlines developed by K-12 teachers in the Burlington, VT School District. These curriculum plans were developed in response to applied learning mini-grants issued by Linking Learning to Life for the Burlington schools.

In this age of unprecedented technical advances, our students may see more dramatic changes in a year than their teachers and parents saw throughout their entire formal education. In a world that moves this quickly, it is incumbent upon educators to provide students with educational experiences that prepare them to continuously connect the knowledge and skills they develop with the real world applications and contributions that can result, and to work collaboratively to become responsible, productive citizens. It is our hope that the examples of creativity, educational best practice, and partnership shared in this Curriculum Guide will inspire and support educators, employers, parents, and communities to prepare students as life-long learners who will contribute and thrive in this rapidly evolving world.