Barb Beadle works with the Indiana Department of Education (DOE) as a state program specialist: business, marketing, information technology & co-op, Office of Career & Technical Education
Indiana INTERNnet: How does the state define an internship?
Barb Beadle: “Indiana has a new diploma called the Core 40 with technical honors, which lists three options of how you would define an internship. The first option is the multidisciplinary course that is set up to provide short-term internships for 9th and 10th graders. This is not set up for a “professional” internship course.
“The second option is the professional career internship, which is primarily for junior/senior course levels. This type can be paid or unpaid and is more of a capstone course after they have pursued a program of study in a career pathway or cluster. The goal of the professional career internship is to introduce these students to the opportunities that are available to them. For example, if I’m focusing on medical courses, I might want to do an internship at a doctor’s office, dentist’s office or a hospital. Typically, a semester would be the maximum duration.
“The third option is a Career and Technical Education (CTE) two-year program such as welding or automotive. There is an option to do an internship during the second year of the program called a work-based internship experience.”
IIN: What should an internship experience consist of?
BB: “The internship experience should consist of two things. For professional career internship: 15 hours of workshops, seminars and/or in-class experience. This could include the teacher in the classroom telling students how to dress and present themselves. This can also include seminars in the workplace, workshops, training and videos. Conferences can also count as fulfilling those seminar requirements. We want those things to be relevant to the student’s specific cluster pathway. The other component is the work component. A minimum of 70 hours of workplace experience is required for one credit.”
IIN: What are the advantages of an internship program for participating parties?
BB: “I think for all three of the participating parties – schools, students and businesses – the partnerships build community relationships, especially in small communities where businesses and schools are working together to improve the local economy and expose students to various career opportunities. Internships give students the advantage of seeing what the real world is like. I think students, and sometimes even teachers, don’t necessarily know the reality of what types of jobs are out there. Sometimes we are preparing students for jobs that aren’t going to be there by the time they graduate college because technology is changing so rapidly. This gives them a chance to explore the jobs that will be there.”
IIN: How does a high school go about setting up an internship program?
BB: “For the multidisciplinary course, high schools can offer that to 9th and 10th graders. For the professional career internship, there is a process for getting approval for these courses. All the school needs to do is fill out an application on the DOE web site and follow the procedures for getting it approved at the local level. For the work-based career and technical internship, if the school already has Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs in place they can start offering internships. The school needs to make sure they have the correct course title in their school listings and make sure that it is a CTE course title. They must also fill out an application for vocational program approval. One of the criteria we have is that they have to develop an advisory (board) of business people within the community, and possibly students, parents and teachers. This advisory board is helpful in finding those students the internship opportunities.”
IIN: What might high schools see as obstacles to developing or strengthening their internship programs? Are these difficult to overcome, and how should they overcome these?
BB: “A good internship takes time to develop and is more than just sending a student out into the workplace. Schools must develop training plans, as well as provide for the student’s safety and address labor laws. Teachers need time to visit and monitor interns on site. There needs to be connectivity between the school, teacher, parent, student and the business person.
“The obstacles are not something that cannot be overcome; rather, it is just making sure that when you put something together like that, it is a quality program. I always refer to the integrity of programs. As teachers, we have the obligation to do the best we can for our students. As administrators, we have an obligation to oversee the student to make sure that it is a good learning experience for them. The main obstacle becomes, does the school want to take the time to put together a quality program? If they do, the benefits are overwhelming for the student, the community and the school.”
IIN: What resources regarding state standards exist for school administrators or internship coordinators?
BB: “The internship manual on the DOE site is the main tool and your biggest resource. In the manual, there are resources like web sites and textbooks. We do have state standards in the manual. This summer, we will be making revisions to the manual and beefing those standards up. We will make them more specific and make sure they are quality standards. The manual is a good starting point, but we need to go beyond it. We encourage schools to use our internship manual and look at the state standards to see how those standards should fit into their program. The revised version should be ready by September 2008.”
IIN: How should schools handle the transportation of interns to and from their internship site?
BB: “There is a legal issue of who is responsible if the student is hurt while traveling to their internship site. We recommend that schools utilize training plans and agreements when determining this. Local schools are ultimately making the decision, but I strongly recommend that those arrangements are in writing. We don’t have a specific requirement at the state level, except to say that you need to make sure that the school, student and business are covered under some type of insurance. I would not take it lightly, and I probably would contact legal council for my school corporation.”
IIN: Should high school internships be paid?
BB: “Internships may be paid or unpaid. We lean toward high school students having unpaid internships. When we first put them together, our thinking was unpaid. However, in our two-year CTE programs, typically internships at the end of this program might be paid. The rule of thumb is that if the company is benefiting from the work of the student or the student displaces another worker, then the internship should be paid. Because the focus should be on exploring options applicable to the career cluster, many times the students will just be observing and not performing work. This decision is up to the local schools, but I would suggest that a school decide to either have paid or unpaid rather than have both in the same course. You have to look at what the goal is. Is it just observing, or is it gaining work experience?”
IIN: What type of documentation does the school need to keep in relation to each student’s internship experience?
BB: “It is important to use training plans and agreements to make sure there is something in writing about what the internship will consist of, and that the internship will be monitored to make sure there is that connection between school and work. The forms we provide in the back of our internship manual are all very helpful. You should document the number of hours that the student has worked. If they are being paid, we recommend they bring in check stubs to document wages if necessary. Additionally, all kinds of legal issues need to be documented, as well as attendance. The agreement doesn’t have to be lengthy. The forms let the student know what the expectation is, as well. Am I expected to dress a certain way? Behave a certain way? Am I graded? What am I supposed to learn while I am here? Keeping track of all of these things is important because when the internship is completed, you need to be able to show why the student received the grade they received.”
IIN: Where can high school administrators go if they have a question about high school internship standards? Who should they contact?
BB: “Our web site and our internship manual are the best places to find answers. We would suggest that anyone interested in starting an internship program of any type view the internship manual first. Then, they need to put together the advisory board. And then if they have questions in that regard, they are certainly free to contact me. If I don’t have the answer, I can certainly send them to the correct contact. We’ll do our best to assist them in finding the answer."
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IIN: Do you have any additional comments?
BB: “Internships are an excellent opportunity and a great learning experience, but they need to be done correctly. By correctly, I mean using training plans and agreements and making sure students are being monitored or visited during the internship. It would be wonderful to eventually see every student have the opportunity to have an internship and be exposed to the many jobs and career pathways that are out there that most of us in the education arena don’t even know are there because technology and jobs change so quickly. It is imperative for students to have this exposure. The internship experience should be a capstone to expose them to what is after they have taken some content courses. For example, I don’t want to go into an accounting office if I’ve never had accounting in the classroom. That connectivity to courses I’ve taken in school to the opportunities in the internship makes for a balanced curriculum and allows more opportunities for students. They see how to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom in the internship.”
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