Structured

Grover (n.d.) describes how school-supervised work experiences need to be structured and designed in order to be of greatest benefit to the student:

"The question districts need to address is how to provide structure to student work experiences in order to make them meaningful and productive. Educators need to recognize that the profit motive is a strong force in the workplace. When youth select jobs without planning assistance from the school or their parents, they tend to choose them on the basis of economic payoff. Educators have a responsibility to evaluate worksites on the basis of their educational payoff (especially when the work experience occurs during school hours). Following are some recommendations to consider when designing appropriate work experiences. These suggestions are for supervised work experiences, which differ from employment in the naturally occurring youth labor force.
• Work experiences that provide little opportunity for decision making or cooperation with others are not likely to foster healthy independence or social responsibility. Jobs that have little connection with adults or the work [that] youth will do as adults are unlikely to serve as effective bridges to adult employment.

• Most students would benefit from counseling before taking a part-time job. This counseling or guidance should be aimed toward helping them find good matches between available work and long-term educational and occupational aspirations.

• Educators need to plan work experiences to ensure greater variety in the job environment than may naturally occur. Job rotation would permit more opportunity for experimentation, identity exploration, and mastery of new information and skills.

• Adolescents may need to be persuaded to forego some amount of short-term earning in return for a payoff in long-term learning.

• Work should be a maturity-enhancing experience. If possible, youth should work in the company of older people who can serve as mentors or role models.

• School attendance should be a condition for both obtaining and retaining a job (both during and after school hours).

• A satisfactory grade point average should be a condition for both getting and staying on the job.

• School personnel should establish a cap on the number of hours that students work. Too many hours of work each week may detrimentally affect academic performance and participation in extra- and co-curricular activities.

• Students should be encouraged and assisted in asking employers to verify and evaluate job performance in a timely manner. Job evaluations must have a useful level of detail and must be conducted on a regular basis. Students should keep a careful record of their employment since these records will make them more employable in their early adult years.

• School credit may be granted for successful completion of work experiences. Granting credit is the process of giving positive evaluation to a specific learning experience.

• Collaboration between employers and school staff should be maintained on a systematic basis. Personnel from the workplace make a critical contribution. They need to be well informed about the program and what it is striving to accomplish. Further, they should play an active role in shaping the learning experiences. The school should assume responsibility for recognition of all personnel who implement work experiences.

• All persons responsible for work experience programs should be familiar with the laws and regulations governing the employment of youth. . . .

• Salary for students involved in paid work experiences should be cooperatively determined by all parties involved, within the context of appropriate laws, regulations, and collective bargaining agreements.

• Teachers coordinating work experiences should be given adequate release time in order to fulfill the responsibilities which accompany this effort. It is recommended as a guideline that one hour release time be given per day per ten students enrolled in school-supervised work experience or 1/2 hour per week per student.

Each district will implement school-supervised work experience in a different manner depending upon the availability of businesses and resources within their community. However, if staff is assigned to monitor a work experience program, they should develop learning stations, training agreements, training plans, discussions to promote reflection and interpretation. They should plan to visit students while they work, establish and implement evaluation procedures, and, when appropriate, offer a related in-school course." (p. 7-9)

Source: School-Supervised Work Experience, by H. Grover, n.d., Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.