A Free Curriculum for High School Teacher Academies and Educators Rising Chapters
Something happened this year that I didn't plan for: high school teacher academy leaders started using Road to Teaching with their students. One teacher academy leader wrote that she wished she'd had it back when she was in high school, navigating her own way toward the classroom. I wrote the book for teacher candidates in college — but the students it kept reaching were younger, and their teachers kept asking the same practical question: how do I turn this into lessons?
So I built the answer. The Road to Teaching Curriculum Companion is a free set of eleven ready-to-teach lessons for high school teacher academies, Educators Rising chapters, Teacher Cadet classes, and Education & Training pathway courses. Every lesson comes with a full teacher plan, print-ready student handouts, and a slide deck — the kind of package you can pick up on Sunday night and teach on Monday.
What's inside the Curriculum Companion
Exploring the profession
Students dig into why they want to teach and draft a personal "why" statement, examine what professionalism looks like inside and outside the classroom, treat self-care as a career skill rather than an afterthought, and research the real numbers — certification pathways, salary schedules, and teacher demand — in their own state.
Their story on paper
Students draft and workshop a genuine philosophy of education using the same reflective questions I give my university teacher candidates, analyze authentic candidate philosophy statements, and build a one-page future-educator résumé aimed at a real target — a camp job, a tutoring program, a chapter officer application.
The interview
Students learn the book's five-step framework for answering any interview question, build a personal answer bank from real teacher interview questions, prepare their first impressions and their own "passion story," and finish with a mock-interview capstone — question cards, panel rubric, and all.
The folder also includes a pre/post student outcomes survey, a standards evidence crosswalk, a one-page pacing guide, and work-based learning tools: a classroom observation protocol, a field experience journal, and a verified hour log.
Go deeper on each unit: Unit 1 — Exploring the Profession · Unit 2 — Their Story on Paper · Unit 3 — The Interview
Built to stack on top of what you already teach
Let me be clear about what this is: a supplement. It's designed to stack on top of the Educators Rising curriculum, Teacher Cadet materials, or whatever your academy already runs — it never replaces them. Every lesson is tagged to the Educators Rising Standards, the Career Ready Practices, and the CTE Education & Training pathway codes, so it drops into an existing program of study without disturbing what's working.
The lessons live in the career-readiness lane — professional identity, philosophy, résumés, interviewing — which complements the pedagogy-focused work your students do elsewhere in the pathway.
Three ways coordinators are set up to run it
- The two-to-three-week arc. Run all eleven lessons in order inside your teacher academy course. The artifacts build on each other and converge at the mock interview.
- Sprinkled across a semester. Identity work early, documents mid-year, interviews in the spring. The arc still holds with weeks between units.
- As chapter programming. Every lesson includes a 30-minute chapter-meeting version, and the capstone doubles as an evening Interview Night with invited educators on the panels — one of the highest-energy events a chapter can host.
What students walk away with
By the end, each student holds a working portfolio: a why statement, a philosophy of education, a one-page résumé, an interview answer bank, a practiced passion story, and a scored mock interview. Those artifacts serve chapter officer applications, scholarship interviews, and summer jobs with kids right now — and someday, the real teacher interview. If your students want to go deeper on interviewing in the meantime, the free teacher interview questions hub and this classroom management interview guide pair well with Unit 3.
Get the free curriculum
Eleven lessons · teacher plans, handouts & slides · assessment and WBL tools · free for classroom and chapter use
Open the curriculum folderCopy it, print it, adapt it, and pass it along to other advisors and coordinators — that's what it's for. And if you teach with it, tell me how it lands with your students. What I hear from teacher academy classrooms directly shapes what I build next.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the Curriculum Companion for?
High school teacher academy coordinators and teachers, Educators Rising chapter advisors, Teacher Cadet instructors, and anyone teaching an Education & Training pathway course with students exploring a future in teaching.
What does it cost?
Nothing. It's free for classroom and chapter use — copy, print, and adapt it for your students. I only ask that the credit line stays on the materials.
How much class time does it take?
Each lesson runs a 50-minute class period, and every lesson also includes a 30-minute chapter-meeting version. The full arc takes two to three weeks, or you can spread the three units across a semester.
What standards does it align to?
Every lesson is tagged to the Educators Rising Standards, the Career Ready Practices, and the CTE Education & Training pathway codes, and the folder includes a standards evidence crosswalk for program-of-study binders.
