Campfire Session — Career and Technical Education (CTE)

Learn how to use Flint to support Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs by helping students build real-world skills, think critically, and apply their learning across pathways.

Jacob Edington, Head of Customer Success at Flint

In this Career and Technical Education (CTE) with Flint Campfire Session, we focused on how to use Flint and Sparky to support career readiness instruction through realistic role play, localized career exploration, and scaffolded skill-building. The session highlighted how CTE teachers can move beyond generic prompts by grounding activities in real-world scenarios (interviews, competitions, crisis simulations) and then using Groups + Analytics to track student growth and surface actionable insights over time.

Content covered in this session includes:

• Context-setting on AI + CTE trends, referencing an article tied to the Savvas Educator Index survey to frame how educators view AI and CTE as key to future readiness—while calling out gaps in confidence and professional development around responsible, critical AI use.

• A walkthrough of CTE-aligned activity design principles, emphasizing realistic role play, student-specific personalization (resume uploads, career interests), localized context (region-specific jobs/employers/outlook), and clear “end-of-activity” documentation students can take home.

• Live demo: Career exploration activity (upper elementary) using a “career quiz → reflection → deeper exploration” flow, where students input a suggested career path and Sparky guides curiosity-driven follow-up questions, then produces a printable synopsis of the student’s learning and next steps.

• Localization as a differentiator, showing how the same career exploration activity can be adapted for different cities/regions so recommendations feel specific, relevant, and actionable for students.

• Live demo: Model UN crisis simulation, where students choose a country and Sparky generates a scenario with stakeholders, developments, mock data, and a country briefing—useful for preparing students for structured, real-world problem solving and policy-style communication.

• Scaffolded interview preparation (two-part sequence) including:

  • Part 1: Informational interview prep where students upload a resume and specify a job/career target and interview context.
  • Part 2: Mock interview where Sparky speaks as the interviewer and students respond aloud, enabling teachers to review student responses and provide feedback (with optional rubric support).

• Language and fluency customization, demonstrating that activities can be created or converted into Spanish (or other languages) and adjusted by proficiency level to match student needs.

• Public Library as a lesson bank, showing where teachers can search, duplicate, and adapt ready-made CTE activities—reducing time-to-launch and helping teachers avoid “recreating the wheel.”

• Live demo: DECA competition role play, modeled on DECA’s situational performance events and rubric, with a build process that starts in chats (brainstorm + refine) and then converts directly into a student-facing activity via the “Start Activity Builder” feature.

• Live demo: Technical & trade career exploration (high school) that mirrors the career exploration flow but adds more advanced components—local employers, near-future job outlook, and a concrete action plan students can follow (plus a printable output).

• Groups as the backbone of CTE implementation, reinforcing that Groups function as classrooms and enable centralized access to activities, gradebook workflows, and View Analytics for tracking interests, progress, strengths, and growth areas across multiple activities.

• Differentiation strategies for multilingual and newcomer ELL students, including when to use subgroups (privacy + targeted experiences, plus analytics roll-up) versus keeping students in the same activity with built-in accommodations (e.g., language switching), and noting current constraints like per-activity settings that may require separate activities.

• How to preview activities effectively, clarifying the difference between Simulate (fast hypothetical examples to iterate quickly) and Start session manually (true student experience with real-time pacing and required student input).

• Group level background info, recommending copying the main group context into a subgroup and adding only what’s different (e.g., “ELL supports,” language expectations, scaffolds) to keep instruction aligned while improving personalization.

• Community support and sharing, pointing attendees to the Flint Community as a place to ask questions, share example lessons, and learn from other educators’ implementations across subjects like Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Computer Science, English Language Arts, and World Language—including hands-on, project-based examples that extend beyond Flint.

Slides from the presentation can be found here.

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Introduction • 00:00

• Jacob introduces the session and agenda.

Ice-breaking news • 01:45

• A discussion of AI in CTE instruction and global/US growth, referencing an article and the Savvas Educator Index to frame AI's role in preparing students for the workforce.

CTE features: Role play and localization • 04:00

• Jacob highlights several ways Flint can support CTE, including realistic role plays, localized contexts, and resume/interview preparation.

• Career exploration activities are demonstrated, including a linked NAT Geo Future Jobs quiz, student inputs, and a final synopsis/printout for home use.

Classroom simulations using Sparky • 10:04

• A Model UN crisis simulation is demonstrated, with students choosing a country and receiving a hypothetical scenario and analysis.

• The activity shows selecting a country, with options to modify or remove elements and then running the scenario to observe responses.

• Sweden is selected for an Arctic resource conflict scenario, highlighting environmental security and current-event relevance.

Multilingual activity customization • 12:33

• Jacob explains that activities can be created in Spanish and adjusted for language and fluency levels, including whether users are native speakers or at a B1 level.

• Jacob notes the ability to duplicate activities from the public library and modify them, and mentions using background information to customize interview prep for students and provide feedback beyond automated analysis.

Creating and converting activities in Flint • 18:56

• Jacob demonstrates building and converting activities within Flint, including real-time adjustments and background information for high school competition scenarios.

Q&A• 27:19

• The group discusses centralizing student work and analytics to track progress over time connected to a Campfire CTE group.

• Participants share excitement about the platform's capabilities for teacher feedback, student performance insights, and the potential for language and world language instruction.

• Jacob outlines how to scaffold a project into multiple activities across English classes, culminating in a large, integrated assignment.

• Accommodations can be set so activities adapt to English language needs, including automatic prompts for language accommodations in the main grade book.

• Subgroups can be created within a group allowing analytics to stay with main group while isolating a subset.

• The team discusses how to run simulations and manual sessions to capture student experiences and iterate quickly.

• Jacob explains how the simulate-and-start-manually options work, showing real-time thinking and speed of responses.

• The participants review how to preview, simulate, and compare rubric-based outcomes for student work at different levels (Excellent, Good).

Conclusion • 42:15

• To learn more, folks can go to the Campfire Calendar, Flint's Instagram (which has a bunch of teacher-facing content), and the Flint Community.