Introduction
In order to complete this activity I spent quite a bit of time with my school’s Director of Student Life brainstorming how local community organizations could partner with the school to collaborate on projects which enhance student learning. I also met with the principal and discussed the same issue. In both conversations, we kept coming back to two major areas, vocational training and community service. The idea was that local organizations and businesses could either offer our students the opportunity to do work, as interns for example, to learn skills and gain workplace experience, or they could offer us opportunities for service learning.
For example:
- Local print shops could volunteer or discount their services for advertisement of school activities in exchange for internship hours and prominent advertising in school publications as a partner. We already have a relationship like this with a print shop, a video production company and an event production company.
- Medical offices are great places for students to gain unique, valuable learning experiences. These opportunities are limited but, with enough contact work, students interested in studying medicine could have a great opportunity to “try it on for size” while still in high school.
- Charity organizations of all kinds welcome volunteer hours from schools like ours all the time. They gain muscle and the students get to be involved in front-line service to a needy community. Many of our student clubs already operate in this way.
- Police and Fire Departments offer educational programs on safety, drugs, self-defense, etc and already have officers assigned to community education. This is a real hit in our Early Childhood and Lower School.
- Local Restaurants can provide food for distribution to local shelters and food pantries; they often have the food but no staff to transport it. We have students who pick up bread every morning and deliver it to organizations all over town, all before 6 am.
- Museums offer wonderful resources for both students and teachers, though these often come at a higher cost than other community partnership opportunities.
in this vein, we have developed an internship program to try to solve a problem we have with second semester seniors who are often less interested in their schoolwork than other students. We arrange their schedules so that they take only two classes during their final semester, both requirements. One is a religious course on business ethics and the other is an Internship course. Both meet only on Fridays, for two hours.
On the other days of the week, students go to work as interns in local businesses. They work in doctor’s offices, businesses, factories and retail stores and then, on Friday, return to school to learn about business, share what they’ve experienced and work on summative writing and presentation projects.
This program runs well, but there are a number of obstacles. The most challenging is locating a meaningful internship position for each student that they are excited to participate in. Some businesses look at interns as something akin to slave labor so we have to make sure that the organization looks at the program as a learning opportunity first. We have to shuffle about 10% of our students during the first week or two but, once that settles down, the vast majority of them have meaningful learning experiences.