Why do We Need to Learn This?
A typical career path for a teacher looks like this: graduate high school, earn a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate at a four-year college, then return to the classroom as an elementary or secondary educator. Along the way, most teachers gain little firsthand experience in industries outside of education beyond the part-time jobs they held in their own formative years. That narrow window of experience makes it hard to answer one of the most common questions a student can ask: “Why do we need to learn this?”
Garden Spot High School, in the Eastern Lancaster County School District, already offers students strong career exploration options, including CTC, internships, co-ops, Access Success, work-based learning, and career coaching. These programs help students explore careers in their areas of interest and build a clear, realistic plan for after graduation. Valuable as they are, these experiences typically live outside the everyday classroom curriculum.
Bringing Industry Into the Classroom, Through the Teachers
In fall 2023, ELANCO School District was awarded a $25,000 grant from the Lancaster STEM Alliance for a Business-Education Curriculum Collaboration, to be carried out over the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years. Through the grant, 26 teachers toured 10 local businesses, two tours per teacher, to learn firsthand about a range of industries. Participating teachers came from across the district, spanning elementary and secondary education with focus areas in business, math, science, and STEM.
Business partners who opened their doors included Keylink Fencing and Railing, High Concrete, Garden Spot Village Greenhouse, JM Lapp LLC, Case New Holland, New Holland Church Furniture, Premier Custom Built, Garden Spot Dental Care, Turf Teq and Spec Fab, and Homestead Nutrition.
After the tours, teachers took part in project-based learning themselves and used what they learned to build new projects tied to curriculum for their own classrooms, projects grounded in real, local industry. This is exactly the kind of partnership that starts chipping away at that age-old question: “Why do we have to learn this?” When a teacher can point to a business down the road and explain how a math or science concept shows up in an actual job, the lesson becomes real.
Why Partnerships Like This Matter
Industry involvement in curriculum development gives educators a direct line to the workplace realities their students will eventually enter. They give employers a chance to shape the pipeline of future talent long before graduation. And they give students an answer, grounded in their own community, to why the work in front of them matters.
Get Involved
Programs like ELANCO’s Business-Education Curriculum Collaboration show what is possible when schools and local employers partner with intention. If your business is interested in opening its doors to educators, or your school is looking to build stronger ties with local industry, Career Ready Lancaster can help connect you with the right partners. Reach out to get involved and help the next generation of students see exactly where their learning leads.
Questions about this program? Contact Jill Hackman at jill_hackman@elanco.org.