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There are suggestions that today's education curriculum is not meeting the needs of most students and as a result students are not prepared for the workforce. A key deficiency idenitfied is the significant gap in problem solving skills among high school students. In order for students to compete successfully for jobs in both the national and international work arenas, career and technology educators must become more pragmatic, resourceful, creative, and flexible in their curriculum and delivery approaches to provide the critical thinking and problem solving skills required. It is reasoned that students require tools to help them find connections between their course work and the real world, and one tool proposed is a learning journal. Used effectively, journal writing provides a teaching method that promotes critical thinking and learning skills; skills that move the students from knowledge and comprehension of information through application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. This article describes what a learning journal is, outlines structured and unstructured formats of journal writing and suggests ways of assessing learning journal assignments by students.