Internships and Externships
I’m a strong fan of giving our students as many different experiences as I possibly can. Over the decades, I’ve found different ways for our students to learn more about the world of work, and how they can build their skills while they are still in school.
It’s no secret I love the Career and Technical Student Organizations for building confidence and workplace readiness, and the question should be: What’s next?
Enter internships and externships.
I have found the job shadowing of externships to be very informative and important for students who are considering different careers. Internships with outside companies, too, are incredibly valuable for students as they are choosing college majors.
Finding them, though. That’s a full time job. A full time job I simply do not have. A previously very common full time job that has been stripped in many school districts—including mine—as budgets dry up.
Hello student internships!
Benefits Of An Internship On Campus
I have a very small but mighty army of interns at my school. Working at a Career and Technical Academy is certainly advantageous to this endeavor, since every student is in a college- and workplace-readiness program. To support their learning in Business Management, I have created and supported student interns for a variety of positions in my classroom. In addition, we have placed our students as interns in other programs that lack the infrastructure to support their learning. The benefits of these internships can not be overstated:
- Increased responsibility – My interns, while their work is technically overseen by me, work almost entirely independently. Depending on which internship they are working, they will develop their own project plans, with success criteria and deadlines. We meet on a regular basis, of course, and they are assigned to my classroom during a given period, but for the most part they behave in an entirely autonomous way. For example, an email from a hotel is how I found out my intern had chosen a location for our recent Disneyland trip.
- Pride in accomplishments – The fact that I am such a “hands off” supervisor is a huge source of pride for my interns. As long as I am not getting in their business, they know they are being successful. While they can’t spend a cent without my authority, they recognize that their opinion and suggestions carry tremendous weight with me, and I will do anything I can to help them succeed in their plans. You can hear it in their voices and see it in their faces: These kids are proud of the position they have earned.
- Easy to oversee and evaluate – In the past, I have done the Work/Study Coordinator position, which was quite difficult. Not only did I need to go offsite to visit the employees, but I had to deal with supervisors in the workplace who sometimes were incompetent and definitely poor role models. By keeping all of my interns on campus, it makes it very easy to oversee their work, and evaluate their success criteria. While they answer to their guidance counselor and ultimately our administration, I remain their front-line supervisor, responsible for everything they do. And I know I’m competent.
Getting Admin On Board
Ready to jump in and start developing an internship program on your campus? Great news! Let’s talk about how you can “sell” this program idea in your own school.
- Guidance counselor – If you have a strong, thriving business program, selling the concept of internships won’t be a problem. The key thing for the guidance department lies in student schedules, and whether there is an “open period” to drop in the internship. I’m fortunate we have an eight-period day. If you are operating on a six-period day, it might be a tougher sell.
- Administration – Armed with the statistics of success for internships during high school, there is no doubt your administration will support this initiative. Administrators want to see students taking personal responsibility for their growth and development, and there is nothing on campus that does that as well as an internship program.
- Parents and students – Anything new might be a tough sell for families, particularly if they are unaccustomed to internships in the corporate world. A strong case can easily be made for the maturity and personal development that occur during an internship. If all else fails, remind them that ‘Internship” looks a whole lot better than “Student Aide” on their transcript!
What Interns Can You Build For Your Program?
I don’t know—it’s your program. Building an army of interns is something that should be considered very carefully, and started very slowly.
No matter your particular specialty in the area of Business Education, the one position I can guarantee that you need is that of Marketing Intern. If you start with just that one position in the coming school year, it will give you some experience with the process, and the ability to build it out and grow to include not only more students but more positions of interest for them.
Why Marketing Intern, Pat? Because we are electives. I don’t have to remind you that our job is 100% based on students taking our classes. Nobody signs up for Accounting—BOOM, Accounting goes away. Not enough students sign up for enough business classes, and you love an entire teacher. I’ve been there. I know. In other words, Boo Boo, you could use the advertising and positive press to drive enrollment. Create your first position to fill the need for social media and internet marketing that will support all of your programs while giving one or two students fantastic experience in advertising and marketing skills.
In my opinion, making these important and prestigious opportunities available to students will boost your enrollment across the board as students see being an intern as the pinnacle of their senior year.
Creating Job Descriptions
The single most difficult part of my intern army lies in their job descriptions. I’ve found over the years that these job descriptions are really only a basis for change, a set of “guidelines” to get us started, but things that can change multiple times over the year. Make sure your interns know that their responsibilities can change daily, but your expectations will remain at the highest level.
- When will you see them? – All of my interns are scheduled with me for one period. It isn’t an “Internship” period—it’s a second roster on top of one of my other classes, so I don’t have time devoted just to overseeing interns. This supports the intern program, because students don’t have to devote the same period to the tasks. That means being an intern can fit into anyone’s schedule, no matter what other classes they are choosing to take.
- What will they do on an average day? – Beats the crap outta me. I know for sure that my Accounting interns were coasting in September, but are slammed right now. A week from our Disneyland trip, my intern isn’t sleeping because he’s so anxious. The easiest schedule belongs to my Marketing interns, as they check and update all of our social medias on a regular basis. While the bulk of the work on the website was at the beginning of the year, social media next ends for them.
- How are they evaluated? – All my interns earn “A” grades every quarter. It’s very simple—-they applied for this position, and received it based on my experiences with them and their demonstrated dedication to our program. I don’t force anyone to apply, I am very clear about the responsibilities, and the grade takes care of itself. Their “success criteria” is varied based on their internship, but I have not ever had a student actually fail to achieve their stated goals.
My Network Of Interns
Okay, Pat, I’m sold! What types of internship positions can I build?
- Accounting – My Accounting interns have a very specific purpose. We run an IRS tax site out of our classroom, doing tax returns for the elderly. My interns are the ones who not only train the rest of the class, but run the site from February to April. The most important—and hardest—of my intern positions, my VITA interns have to be highly skilled in Accounting, as well as being personable and confident enough to deal with the public and earn their trust.
- Marketing – I mentioned our Marketing intern, and the fact that she is solely responsible for maintaining not only our website but also our daily social media. Not only does this person need to understand and be proficient in several platforms, but they must be detail-oriented and have excellent time management. This isn’t something that can just be dropped and picked back up. A different intern handles external communications, building our list of community partners and our exposure outside of campus. She has, for example, gotten us published in the national FBLA magazine, and received a $1000 sponsorship check from a local bank.
- Business Management – The largest group I have are my department interns. With two large field trips in a year, I have several interns whose sole responsibility is facilitating field trips. Extremely detail oriented, these interns needs to communicate with administration on campus, as well as professionals at our field trip site. This is an extremely difficult internship that requires someone with advanced skills in every area. For example, this intern just paid disney over $13000 for upcoming tickets. He was so nervous about that high a sum of money he was nauseous! Internships aren’t for the faint-hearted!
These aren’t student aides…
As you can tell, these aren’t student aides. They aren’t running errands for me or grading warm-ups. They don’t take attendance or decorate my door.
They are professionals (in training!) and I treat them as such. It only works because I have previous relationships with all of my interns. The single thing I would tell you to help you be successful is to only accept applications from students who have been successful in your program.
“Promote” your students, and they will promote your program. And learn invaluable life and workplace skills in the process. It’s a win-win situation.
THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR!!!
Wow, thank you for reading about student interns!
Hey, since you’re here! You may as well check out what it’s like to attend conference, here, and learn about project based learning, here! Check out our other topics here! Either way, I appreciate you!
Please leave a COMMENT about any tips you may have!! Or comment what your favorite lesson of mine was! How’s your student organization operating?
Feel free to contact me or leave a COMMENT with anything you would like to hear more about! Or reach out with any unrelated questions, comments, concerns, or random outbursts of excitement by clicking here.
Oh! And don’t forget to check out my video series by CLICKING HERE!!!
Resources
https://joinhandshake.com/blog/students/internships-vs-externships/