Summer Internships for High School Youths

      The goal of High Schools That Work is to advance career-bound youths’ academic, intellectual, technical and personal skills. These students are defined as the large number of high school students who plan to work, enter the military, attend a two-year community college or technical school, or enroll in a four-year college or university after high school graduation. By integrating high-level academic studies with technical learning, high schools can raise the achievement of these students.

    Many high schools cannot provide the in-depth career studies or modern technology and equipment to prepare students for today’s workplace. A well-planned summer internship can meet these needs.

    Summer internships motivate students to select the right courses, study harder and make learning in high school a priority. Students benefit from seeing real-life applications of the academic, technical, intellectual and personal skills that are being taught in high school.

    Internships also give students access to primary jobs — jobs that lead to high wages and career pathways — rather than low-skill, low-wage secondary jobs or "youth" jobs usually available to high school students. Summer internships may be offered in any field, including manufacturing, health care, banking and finance, travel and hospitality, communications and construction.

    A summer internship improves the quality of school-based learning by:

• introducing youths to modern workplace equipment and actual problems faced in the workplace;
• giving youths access to jobs that require more knowledge and skills than ordinary "youth jobs";
• enabling educators and employers to work together in preparing students for success in the workplace;
• helping educators connect work-site learning to school-based learning;
• allowing students to experience a career field before 12^th grade so that they can "tone up" their school-based academic and technical program of study before graduation;
• demonstrating that high performance in high school "counts" in students’ plans for the future;
• creating opportunities for youths to obtain good jobs in the companies where they served as interns and to continue their studies at work and/or in postsecondary education; and
• providing valuable information on students’ skills so that educators can revise the academic and technical curricula and the overall program of study.

    Summer internships benefit students, teachers, schools and employers.

    Students benefit from working and learning in a high-skill, high-wage environment. They observe all aspects of the company’s operations and discover how the knowledge they gain in high school is applied in the workplace.

    Teachers benefit from a better understanding of what business and industry expect. By observing student interns, teachers can adjust curricula and instruction to the needs of the work site.

    High schools benefit because they can assure students and parents that graduates will be well prepared for promising careers. Close ties with local employers enable schools to connect youths with career opportunities in numerous fields.

    Employers benefit from the strong, long-term relationships with local schools, which will produce qualified job candidates for the companies.

    In 1996 the Southern Regional Education Board, 20 high schools, four postsecondary technical institutions and several manufacturers in the Atlanta area joined forces to create a summer internship program in high-tech manufacturing. They sought input from groups that had designed and conducted successful internships in other parts of the nation: Boeing Aircraft Corp., Seattle; the Chamber of Commerce Craftsmanship 2000 program, Tulsa, Okla.; Cornell Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration Project, Ithaca, N.Y.; Siemens Corp. USA, New York; and Wilson High School Internship Project, Portland, Ore. The success of the summer internship program in the Atlanta area is based on the commitment and persistence of staff members at CIBA Vision Corp. and the Siemens Energy and Automation Division, both in Atlanta.

    To support the Atlanta area internship program, educators and employers developed a how-to guide, Planning and Conducting Student Summer Internship Experiences (publication 97V01), that was distributed to schools and work sites participating or being recruited to participate in the program. This publication provides detailed information on the roles of all participants in a summer internship program. It contains the following sections:

• Internship Coordinators’ Role
• Employer Partners’ Role
• Recruiting and Selecting Student Interns
• The Internship Experience
• Evaluation and Follow-up Activities