Internships provide lessons for the real world

Mountain Middle School has always been a school to push the limits and go beyond what the norm is. This past week, Mountain definitely lived up to that. For an entire week, the eighth-graders interned. There were a few weeks of preparation that included contacting organizations and writing résumés and cover letters. Then we jumped right into them. We were required to work at our “job” for 15 hours over the span of five days. Internships are a common occurrence in high school, but Mountain decided to open up this opportunity to younger students to allow them to be more immersed in the real working world at an earlier age. Some kids have experienced things they weren’t expecting, and the internships have opened their eyes to what some jobs actually require. “As a musician, I didn’t expect it to be like this, like I have to do graphic designing,” said Delaney Kehm, 14, who interned at iAm MUSIC. “I feel like that prepares me and has me making a decision if I want to continue what I want to do in the future.” She added that, in doing an internship in eighth grade rather than high school, she knows what to expect if another internship opportunity comes along. Teachers at Mountain also find the internships to be a rewarding experience. “I would say this week has been one of my most rewarding weeks all year as a teacher, to go out and see the students,” said Chris Hughes, eighth-grade teacher leader. “But also, the part that makes it rewarding for me is that the students are so excited.” Hughes also said internships proved helpful in developing skills such as making a professional phone call, which he believes is a skill that has become lost to emails and text messages. The students had to call the places where they were going to intern and were unsure how to approach the situation. Hughes said after everyone made their calls, he realized the unexpected lesson. “That wasn’t at first my goal, but when I saw that, I realized how important it was and how useful it is.” Other students found the experience of internships not hard but rather useful. “It wasn’t really that hard simply because I already knew that person,” said Marie Davis, 14, who interned with Nancy Stoffer, the diversity coordinator at Fort Lewis College. “My favorite part of internships is getting to see and learn all these new things that I haven’t learned before.” Both Hughes and Davis agree that internships teach students things they aren’t able to learn in a normal school environment but are important to be successful. For most of last week, the eighth-graders were developing skills and learning important lessons through their internships, and they now are more prepared to go into high school and for other internship and job opportunities in the future. Source- durangoherald For further assistance related to Internship related queries in India, Dubai or Singapore, please visit: http://www.pursueasia.com

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