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Lesson plan Grade 9 Careers & CTE

Who Will Run the Plant? A Grade 9 Water Workforce Lesson

A 50-minute grade 9 careers lesson where students model the sector's retirement wave and build a cost-benefit argument for how a utility should fill operator openings.

Objectives

  1. Students will use openings and retirement data to estimate how many operators a utility must recruit.
  2. Students will construct a cost-benefit argument for how a utility should respond to the retirement wave.

Vocabulary

Apprenticeship
A way to learn a skilled job by working alongside experienced workers while getting paid. Water utilities use apprenticeships to train new operators and technicians.

Also: retirement wave, marginal cost, marginal benefit

Teacher overview

The water sector faces a hiring problem that has little to do with the number of plants. Roughly one-third of the workforce is near retirement, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 10,000 openings for operators each year, on average, from 2025 to 2035, all from replacing workers who retire or leave the occupation; that figure describes operators specifically. This lesson has students turn those numbers into a simple estimate of a utility's staffing gap, then build a cost-benefit argument about how the utility should fill it. The lesson shows students that the same workforce data inform both a career choice and a utility's policy choice.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Ask students who they think will run their town's water plant in ten years. Explain that many current operators will retire, and that filling those jobs is both a career opening for students and a planning problem for utilities.

Read the data (10 min): Write these three figures on the board and read them aloud as a class: the US employed about 131,000 operators in 2025, about 10,000 openings are projected each year, and in 2016 only about 10 percent of water workers were 24 or younger, compared with 12.5 percent of all U.S. workers. Ask students what these three numbers, taken together, suggest about the years ahead.

Model the gap (12 min): Work with a fictional utility that employs 20 operators. If about one-third of them become retirement-eligible within the decade, model the estimate: one-third of 20 is about 6.7, so the utility should plan to recruit and train roughly 7 operators over that period. Then estimate nationally: about 10,000 openings each year over 5 years is about 50,000 openings. Keep the counts labeled as operators or openings so students see that each number stands for people.

Build the argument (18 min): Pose the choice. Suppose the fictional utility can fund an apprenticeship that trains new operators, but the program has a real cost. In pairs, students write a short argument for or against funding it, using marginal cost and marginal benefit. The marginal cost is the added money and staff time the program needs; the marginal benefit is having trained operators ready as retirements hit, avoiding vacant shifts and rushed hiring. Each pair states a claim and supports it with at least one cost and one benefit.

Share and exit ticket (5 min): Two pairs share opposing arguments. As an exit ticket, each student writes one sentence naming the strongest cost and the strongest benefit of the apprenticeship, whether or not they supported it.

Who Will Run the Plant? A Grade 9 Water Workforce Lesson — Grade 9 Careers & CTE
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

  1. A fictional utility employs 20 operators, and about one-third of them will become retirement-eligible within the decade. About how many operators should the utility plan to recruit and train over that period? Round to the nearest whole operator.
  2. About 10,000 operator openings are projected nationally each year. About how many openings is that over 5 years?
  3. With a partner, write a short argument for or against the utility funding an apprenticeship that trains new operators. State a claim and support it with at least one marginal cost and one marginal benefit.
  4. Exit ticket: In one sentence, name the strongest cost and the strongest benefit of the apprenticeship, whether or not you supported it.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: about 7 operators. One-third of 20 operators is about 6.7, which rounds to roughly 7 operators to recruit and train over the decade.
  2. Answer: about 50,000 openings. About 10,000 openings each year times 5 years equals 50,000 openings.
  3. Answer: Accept any sound argument. A "for" case should pair the marginal cost (program money and staff time) with a larger marginal benefit (trained operators ready as retirements hit, fewer vacant shifts). An "against" case should argue the marginal cost outweighs the benefit for that utility, for example if it can hire trained operators from nearby instead.
  4. Exit ticket answer: Responses vary but should name a concrete cost (the program's money and staff time) and a concrete benefit (a ready supply of trained operators as current staff retire).

Differentiation

Support

Provide the gap estimate partly worked (one-third of 20 already shown as about 6.7) so students focus on interpreting the result. Give a two-column organizer labeled "Cost" and "Benefit" for the argument step.

Extension

Ask students to explain why an apprenticeship might be a better value for a large utility than a small one, using the idea that a fixed program cost is spread across more future hires.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "retirement wave," "apprenticeship," "marginal cost," and "marginal benefit" with simple definitions and an example. Provide a claim frame: "The utility should / should not fund the apprenticeship because the benefit of ___ is greater / smaller than the cost of ___."