Dressed in a hard hat and florescent safety vest, Norma McGinnis stood next to an unfinished highway bridge on the North Side last week, pointing to a truck snaking its way backwards over the narrow ramp.

"So this would be a CDL license?" she asked, jotting down notes about the driver's qualifications.

Ms. McGinnis normally spends her days as a health and physical education teacher at Northgate High School. But for three days last week, she was on a job-hunting mission -- not for herself, mind you, but for her high school students interested in a career in construction.

In the past couple months, 13 such teachers have fanned out across the region, participating in the "Educator in the Workplace" program run by the Career Dynamics office of the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.

The idea behind the program is to improve the career prospects of high school students by facilitating connections between teachers and employers. As a side benefit, the program helps businesses recruit new employees and gives them a chance to tell teachers what skills prospective employees might be missing.

After their days of job shadowing, the teachers are required to complete two lesson plans about the experiences.

"Our real goal here is that students get current, up-to-date information, and that they learn about it in an exciting way," said Daniel Paul, program coordinator for Career Dynamics at the AIU. "It answers the question, whether it's math or science or English, 'Why do I have to learn this?' "

Nicole Kenline, an English teacher at Baldwin High School, spent three days at the Equitable Resources gas company learning about career opportunities and absorbing pleas that students be taught better communication skills.

"Every person every day I was there voiced the same complaint: that people aren't taught proper e-mail etiquette," she said, noting that the company was concerned about improper grammar in e-mails, as well as the use of text messaging abbreviations. "We have to spend a little more time on those things that we take for granted."

On the construction site at the intersection of Interstate 279 and Route 28, Ms. McGinnis peppered project superintendent Gary Chesnoski and recruiting specialist Ron Kubitz of Brayman Construction Corp. with questions about whom they hire and what a career trajectory for an entry-level worker might look like.

Not all of her students want to go to college directly after high school, Ms. McGinnis said, and construction offers more of a career path than many other industries.

For those without a post-high school degree, the highest-paying available jobs go to union members, said Mr. Kubitz. Because getting into some unions can be difficult without connections, he suggested that students could work as laborers in Brayman's shop and yard, making somewhere around $12 an hour, and that Brayman could sponsor them for a union if the company was pleased with their work.

"There's a lot of good-paying jobs here, but they have to know how to find them," said Ms. McGinnis.

She also was pleased to see that there were women working construction the site and to hear that there are summer job opportunities for high school students.

Mr. Chesnoski told Ms. McGinnis that it's important for high school students to have basic math skills, a strong work ethic and good communication skills, but that most everything else can be taught on the job.

At Oxford Development, which hosted a teacher for three days in June, vice president Scott Pollock also tried to stress communication skills. The company finds that the college graduates that it hires have a solid engineering background but aren't always able to clearly communicate their knowledge.

Fred Gurney, president of McKeesport-based Maglev Inc., wanted teachers to inform their students about metalworking jobs that are available with an associate's degree, or a welding certificate, in precision fabrication technology. Such workers are in demand, he said, and might earn a starting salary in the high $30,000 or low $40,000 range.

"There are excellent jobs, high-paying jobs available, and we're never going to get them filled if we don't have students coming in," he said.

Back at the construction site, Ms. McGinnis was focused on getting her students into a proper career pipeline. High school shouldn't just be about academic skills, but also about life skills and career connections, she said.

"We've got to get them into real world positions -- we've got to build it from the ground up," she said, looking around at the piles of wooden palettes, pristine concrete and heavy construction equipment. "No pun intended."