Ep 343: CTE Teachers Need More Than "Build Relationships"

About this episode

This episode discusses the limitations of solely building relationships in CTE classrooms and emphasizes the importance of structure and effective lesson planning.

If you’re a new CTE teacher, there’s one phrase you can’t escape—build relationships. That advice might be plastered across every teaching group and comment thread, but let’s be honest: just building relationships isn’t enough in a real secondary classroom. If you’ve ever thought, “There must be something more,” you’re not alone. This episode of The Secondary Teacher Podcast with host Khristen Massic tackles exactly why relationships alone won’t cut it for career technical education teachers managing multiple preps and hands-on classrooms. Here’s the common pitfall: everyone tells you to focus on connecting with students. And sure, students do learn better when they feel known and safe. But what nobody is saying out loud? Relationships by themselves aren’t enough to keep kids coming back, especially in a CTE classroom where structure matters just as much as trust. Think about it—if your lesson turns into endless games or filler time, students remember having fun, but they’ll also remember not learning enough to sign up for your next course. That’s a real consequence, and it’s usually the elephant in the room nobody wants to admit. Let’s get specific. There’s a story in this…

People in this episode

Host: Khristen Massic

Topics covered

• CTE teaching
• building relationships
• classroom management
• hands-on learning
• student engagement

Keywords

• CTE teachers
• relationship building
• classroom structure
• student retention
• hands-on lessons

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CTE

More episodes of Secondary Teacher Podcast

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• Ep 341: Teacher Planning Starts Here When You Have Multiple Courses · June 4, 2026 · 11 min
• Ep 340: Teacher Work Life Balance Without Giving Up Your Summer · June 2, 2026 · 10 min
• Ep 339: Teacher Planning With the Introduce, Practice, Produce Framework · May 28, 2026 · 12 min
• Ep 338: Secondary Teacher Strategies for Building Courses From Scratch · May 26, 2026 · 12 min
• Ep 337: Multiple Prep Teacher Planning: Stop Collecting Resources · May 21, 2026 · 10 min