Internships Immerse Students in Potential Professions

By Nicole Coleman, The Journal-Register, Medina, N.Y.

Sep. 12–ALBION — For all those high school seniors who ever felt their education had nothing to do with real life — Albion High School has them beat.

The Albion Internship Program offers students the opportunity to learn all of the life lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom. Employment skills such as dealing with customers, respecting supervisors and co-workers and managing one’s time are only the beginning, says School to Career Coordinator Maura Pierce.

The program allows students to test the waters of a new career at a time when they are facing post-graduation decisions.

“We’re looking to provide students with on the job experience,” Pierce said. “We need to turn (them) loose to experience the real world. We have to prepare them for life beyond our four walls.”

At the end of the 1998 spring semester, only 10 students were involved in the program, Pierce said. Last June, there were 167.

“We have made some big changes,” Pierce said. “We have been able to meet the needs of many more students.”

In previous years, the program was an elective class, Pierce said, and students only interned three days a week. Now, the class has been eliminated and many students with blocks of time in their schedules are interning with the same employer five days a week, allowing for a full internship experience.

Employers often become teachers, helping their interns make critical decisions about college majors or jobs, while expanding their understanding and knowledge of the business world. Without the support of community businesses and non-profit organizations, the program wouldn’t exist, Pierce said.

This year a “Brown Bag Lunches” program has been initiated in which community leaders and business people will sit down informally with the students to talk about their jobs. Representatives from the military service, sports management and athletic training and the field of writing are among those in store for the students this semester, Pierce said.

“They are so welcoming to our students,” she said. “These are great opportunities for our students to really hear first-hand from practitioners.”

In the future, the program is hoping to provide summer internships as a benefit for those juniors and seniors with rigorous academic responsibilities during the school year. Only one student did a summer internship through the program this year, Pierce said.

The summer program could also allow students to take internships outside of the community. Opportunities within Orleans County for some career paths, architecture for instance, are sometimes difficult to find for students, Pierce said. It also gives those students with a number of interests time to try out another field.

“It’s been a real pleasure for us to interact with the students,” said Board Member Iva McKenna, who worked with interns at her place of employment. She said the program gives students a realistic look by completely immersing them in a potential profession.

“They can save a child many years that would be wasted,” McKenna said.

Students are required to keep track of their hours and to submit something to Pierce every week, she said. The internships end early so that students can prepare a visual project about their experience.

In other news:

–Grants Manager Sue Starkweather has been named New York state’s Golden Empire Award winner. She will travel to New York City Oct. 26 to receive the award. “This is a prestigious award,” said Superintendent Ada Grabowski, who submitted Starkweather’s name without her knowing. “She was pretty thrilled on Thursday when we found out.”

–Enrollment is down 145 children from last year. It is at 2,405 for the beginning of the school year, Grabowski said.

–The district has two foreign exchange students this year. One is from Finland, the other from Italy.

–Brown Bag Lunches fall line-up: Colonel Ron Reid, a 1978 Albion High School alumni will meet with students Sept. 28. Ed Fitzsimmons with the State University of New York at Buffalo’s Athletic Training and Sports Medicine department will speak Oct. 5. Robbi Hess, owner of Byline Magazine, will talk about writing, editing and publishing with students Oct. 25.

—–

For more stories, visit http://www.journal-register.com/.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Journal-Register, Medina, N.Y.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.