Glossary
Middle School CTE Teacher Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential middle school CTE teacher terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key middle school CTE teacher vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in middle school CTE teacher training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Career cluster
- Group of related careers.
- Career pathway
- Course sequence toward a career.
- CTE
- Career and technical education.
- CTSO
- Career and technical student organization.
- Digital literacy
- Using technology well.
- Engineering design process
- Plan, build, test, improve.
- Exploratory course
- Short intro course.
- FCCLA
- Family, Career and Community Leaders of America.
- Lab safety contract
- Signed safety rules.
- Project-based learning
- Learning through projects.
- Prototype
- Early model.
- Rubric
- Scoring guide.
- Soft skills
- Workplace habits.
- STEM
- Science, technology, engineering and math.
- TSA
- Technology Student Association.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Middle School CTE Teacher practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Middle School CTE Teacher training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.