Workplace experience has become more valuable than ever in recent years as more students enter the workforce before college. A new district internship initiative has facilitated this experience for a wide range of career interests from teaching to dentistry.

Senior Kaylen Hyde has been interning at Prairie Ridge Elementary since her sophomore year.

“I’ve always known I wanted to be a teacher and then I found out that [the school] had teaching as a career and then internships,” Hyde said. “I’ve been working with third grade for the last three years.”

Hyde has gotten diverse experience with her internship, doing many of the tasks a teacher would.

“I’ve graded papers and I’ve taken small groups out to help them with assignments,” Hyde said. “Being able to get in the classroom and with the kids has made me want to be a teacher even more.”

Senior Bridgit Duffin has been able to intern at WaterOne through the school and has found it valuable to her pursuit of chemical engineering.

“I think [interning] is just a great opportunity that the school and the district has given me to go and see the real world and see how what I want to do can be applied in the real world,” Duffin said.

Interning provides not only valuable experiences that guide students for post-secondary education, but it also gives students many skills for any career, according to program facilitator Kevin Jeffries.

“I think [students] are getting a lot of learning about what it’s like to show up to work on time,” Jeffries said. “You know how to work with other people, how to network, how to collaborate, a lot of that stuff for when you have no idea what [employers] expect.”

Jeffries explains that for students interested in interning, it is a simple process.

“If you think you want to [pursue a career], but you’ve never really experienced it yet, come talk to me and I’ll help find something,” Jeffries said. “I have a lot of contacts, so I try to leverage those connections to help find opportunities for the students.”

However, the complexity of tracking these internships does mean there is a limit on how many students can intern.

“We have capacity to handle about 25 interns a semester,” Jeffries said. “That’s because we have to do all the paperwork. We have to do site visits too where I will go out and actually see what this site is where the student is working to make sure it’s safe.”