Last year the author had the pleasure of working with a team of dedicated teachers in an alternative high school setting on the implementation of a grant she had written for their program. The grant was the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act grant, federally distributed to the states. As the grant writer and teacher development specialist for this particular program, the author was responsible for not only writing the grant but also implementing it across the curriculum. She worked with the teachers in the program and formed a collaborative, interdisciplinary team to plan and develop an integrated curriculum that built skills and met standards for both academic subjects and the Career Development and Occupational Studies standards developed by the New York State Department of Education. As a result of the implementation in this CTE-centered integrated curriculum, student outcomes were positively affected through increased attendance in the program and their ability to see the interconnectedness of the global economy, US politics, and the environment. The teachers were able to teach thematically to make these connections strong across the disciplines. Overall, the integrated, collaborative, and thematic model of teaching was successful for English language learners (ELLs) in this alternative educational setting. In this article, the author discusses the promise and peril of integrating career skills into the English class for ELLs. She stresses that teachers who have ELLs in their classrooms, schools, and communities can take responsibility for educating the students about options available to them, introducing a curriculum that makes those connections for them, and finally, teaching them how to take action themselves.