PCS intern program in full swing for 2021-2022 school year

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a series regarding the internship program at Perkins County Schools which will appear on the School page in future editions of the Grant Tribune.

Principal Ben Jones and PCS elementary art teacher Nicole Long have been working to revamp and improve the work study and internship program at Perkins County Schools, and this year they are able to see their hard work come to fruition.

In the past, the school had a work study program for juniors and seniors who held a 3.0 grade point average or above. Qualifying students were allowed to leave campus, juniors for one period and seniors for two, to attend their jobs.

Oftentimes, Jones said, these were students who already had employment and wanted to continue to work throughout the school day.

The school would monitor the student to make sure they were showing up to work and staying for as long as they needed to, but Jones noted the work study program was very student-led.

“I don’t know if there was necessarily a negative to the work study program,” Jones said. “We just knew we could get more out of it, and we knew it could be more than students wanting to continue their part time job. It could be an actual experience for something they want to do later on in life.”

Jones and Long looked at their Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs from the last several years, talked to other schools and worked with the State Department to figure out a program that would work best for PCS.

Work-based learning or job-based learning, Jones said, is experiencing a big push across the state, so they decided to implement a work-based learning program in Grant.

By looking at the CTE program, which helps students determine areas they are potentially interested in pursuing, Jones and Long found there were many resources within the community students could potentially utilize to help map their futures.

“Sometimes we can forget to look at our own backyard, and our backyard offers a ton of opportunities for our kids,” Jones said.

The CTE program breaks down into six core academic fields of study, which are then further broken down into specific careers and opportunities. The fields include business, marketing and management; agriculture, food and natural resources; communication and information systems; skilled and technical sciences; health sciences; and human sciences and education.

“I think we are really lucky we have a lot available as far as resources here in our community,” Jones said. “There are maybe a few areas that are a little bit low, but otherwise we have pretty much everything.”

Long said the goal of the program and having students work with local businesses is not only to provide the students with work experiences in specific fields, but also to show them the opportunities in the local area so they might feel a desire to return to the area after schooling.

Jones noted area businesses are and have always been very giving to the school, so he hopes they see this as a grass-roots approach to potentially recruit future employees for local employers.

The school works with students to find a field of study or employment that interests them, and Long helps match them with local businesses that may fit their interests and can give students a good idea of what a particular field is like.

If students are interested in an internship but aren’t sure what particular field or business they would like to work with, the school uses the CTE program and a program called YouScience, which takes aptitude and interests and combines the two to help suggest options to the student.

Once a general field or area of interest is determined, Long then speaks with local businesses to see what they have to offer and what they are seeking before having students assemble resumes.

When a workplace is found, students are to set goals, and Long encourages them to work together with their workplace supervisor to come up with goals that are meaningful and relevant both to the business and the student.

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