Lynnfield educators latched onto a great idea this year and now it’s time to improve it.
Eight high school students embarked on academic year internships designed to expose them to the working world and perhaps inspire them to consider previously uncontemplated careers.
Internships often get a bad name because they are equated with coffee-fetching and paper filing jobs or the butts of jokes portrayed on television or in movies. To their credit, Lynnfield school administrators understand high school is a perfect time to harness students to real-life experiences even as they consider college careers.
The top-notch students who participated in internships this year are sure to inspire the next class of Lynnfield High School seniors to step out of the classroom and into the real world. Interest in the 2016-2017 program could double, even triple, student participation and make senior year internships an established Lynnfield initiative on par with Pioneer Pride recognition conferred upon selfless students.
The district’s decision to join the ranks of secondary schools nationwide offering internships provides an opportunity to advance them as a “bridge year” pursuit between senior year in high school and freshman in college.
Finances and soul searching are prompting more students to put a bend in the previously straight road running from high school to college. With encouragement and support from parents and mentors, they realize experience outside the classroom after 12 years in school provides opportunities and inspirations enriching subsequent academic endeavors.
Giving students a chance to balance internships and academics may be a solution to resolving the college debt crisis burdening students. Student interns, including the first crop from Lynnfield, might find their experience leads them into a career and prompts them to mix work with college and graduate in, say, six instead of four years. Is an employer scanning resumes for college graduates, looking for students who completed four years of school or the student worker who earned a college degree and managed to tuck two years of relevant job experience under their belt?
Internships will lead some students away from academics and into the working world where they will become experienced and seasoned and probably return to the classroom older and wiser.
Lynnfield school officials deserve credit for firing a salvo in what could become an education revolution.
