Nebraska Career and Technical Education Conference 2026

If you have every come across a situation where you have not known how to communicate, then you know part of what an EL student may feel on any given day in any US classroom. We all need to be EL teachers, teaching literacy in our classrooms as we teach them their career skills. This session will focus on arming CTE teachers with common strategies and ideas to help aid them in the classroom and connecting with our EL population, while using real examples and tools from our classes.

Welding assessments give students feedback about the quality of their work.  This session will give teachers an assessment to grade students work.  The assessment follows the American Welding Society standards in a simple check list that is measurable to help students improve their welds.  The session will look at an assement, how to use measuring tools, and discussion from teachers about what practices teachers use in their classroom. 

Join us for "Connecting Educators: Cultivating a Collaborative Teaching Network", a dynamic session designed to bring together educators to share ideas, resources, and best practices. You'll have the opportunity to network with fellow teachers, discuss challenges and successes, and have lots of laughs.Whether you're a seasoned educator or new to Ag Education, this session fosters the development of a supportive community that promotes growth, creativity, and the exchange of knowledge.

The Virtual Testing Ag Performance Solutions (VTAPS) program has been modeled around the highly successful UNL-TAPS (http://taps.unl.edu) program. The VTAPS program allows high school ag students to have a similar TAPS experience. VTAPS participants will select the hybrid and seeding rate they wish to plant, apply nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation water. All the decisions and generated weather information are fed into a crop simulation model (DSSAT) and results are included in a weekly summary. At the end of the simulation participants will see how they rank in their final yield, cost of production and nitrogen and irrigation efficiency.

The concept of school-based enterprises has become a hot topic, but many teachers find themselves with lots of questions. How do I get started? Where do I get funding? What does this look like within my agriculture education program? This session will introduce you to the Nebraska FFA Launch! Program sponsored by the Nebraska FFA Foundation and facilitated by the Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program at UNL. The Launch! Program is designed to help teams of high school students ideate, plan, launch, build, and grow their own school-based enterprises. Learners in this session will understand the program outline, schedule, and experience a few of the curriculum activities.

Discover how artificial intelligence can enhance—not replace—your current agricultural education curriculum. This session introduces practical AI tools that help teachers generate lesson ideas, create classroom resources, differentiate instruction, and refresh existing content without starting from scratch. Participants will explore ways AI can spark new approaches to teaching familiar topics while saving valuable planning time. The session will also cover best practices, ethical considerations, and classroom do’s and don’ts so educators can confidently and responsibly integrate AI into their programs. Participants will leave with ready-to-use ideas and tools for immediate classroom application.