Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Internship Programs at Newtown High School


Contributed by Sarah Ferris (Fairfield County)

There is a junior and senior internship program at my school, but less than 10% of kids at my school take advantage of it. It involves 30 hours of work in total, usually about a month, and it can be any time during the year. Students have to sign up by December by filling out a brief form detailing their career interest in that area. The most popular internships are for photography, but students have also worked at the local paper, research centers, and retail businesses.

It's difficult to arrange perfect internships because they cannot occur during school. It would be very beneficial to students if they could leave during the day to work, because many businesses close around 4 or 5, so there is not much time to work out a schedule.

We also have something called Junior and Senior Project, which is a popular semester-long class. This is different from an internship, however, because there must be a final project to present, something tangible. This also gives students the ability to work with professionals in their field of interests, but again, students are not allowed to miss school.