Goal:
- Students get professional experience and gain skills by filling out applications for internships, jobs, and scholarships.
- Experience applying to jobs while they’re in school helps students gain perspective about the significance and value of what they’re learning in their computer science courses.
- Outside classroom experiences, like internships, inspire and refocus students.
- This extra inspiration helps students do better in class.
- Students’ hard work in class is validated when they receive awards, scholarships, college admittance, and jobs.
- Students need to learn to seek out new experiences and take advantage of opportunities even if it feels unfamiliar and out of their comfort zone.
- Create a lesson where students fill out applications as part of the class.
- It is helpful to find links to local jobs and internships or you can find sample job applications here.
- By doing this as a lesson in class, students have your support, insight, and experience to help them with pieces of the application they may not know how to address.
- Seek out student internships, scholarships, and other opportunities for students to apply to encourage them to try things they may not have otherwise.
- Examples: NCWIT Aspirations Awards, Verizon App Challenge, Apple Summer Internships, summer college programs.
- This works! Students from Foshay Tech Academy in South Los Angeles are often chosen for scholarships, selected for awards, and hired as game testers, web designers, and internships while still in high school.