For several Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School students, the best part about participating in an internship ranged from watching babies go home after spending time in a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit to checking out a new telescope at NASA and embellishing an artist’s paintings for customers.
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is making progress in achieving its goal to increase the number of students who can make those memories by participating in work-based learning, but still faces challenges, Bethesda Today learned during recent visits to two high schools with MCPS staff and county school board President Julie Yang.
Last August, the district launched a work-based learning pilot program at four high schools: Gaithersburg, Seneca Valley in Germantown, Springbrook in Silver Spring and Bethesda-Chevy Chase in Bethesda. The pilots explored how MCPS could create the infrastructure at every school to get students involved in work-based learning. The goal, according to the district, was to increase participation from local businesses in offering work-based learning opportunities while expanding options for students. Bethesda Magazine currently has an intern as part of B-CC’s long-running internship program.
The pilot, alongside efforts at other schools, seems to be working, according to the school visits and MCPS data. From the 2023-2024 school year to the 2024-2025 school year, the district increased the number of high school students who participated in a work-based learning experience during the school year from 3,216 to 5,279, according to MCPS.
Bethesda Today joined Yang and MCPS staff as they visited two schools that have focused on work-based learning — Bethesda-Chevy Chase High and Quince Orchard High in Gaithersburg — to hear from students and staff involved with the programs.
Yang’s visit occurred as MCPS aims to have 45% of students in each graduating class complete work-based learning opportunities before graduation by the end of the 2024-2025 school year, according to Shawn Krasa, a MCPS work-based learning supervisor.
According to the district’s 2022-2025 strategic plan, 21% — or about 2,400 of 11,600 students — of the 2023-2024 graduating class participated in work-based learning. With about 11,700 students expected in this spring’s senior class according to MCPS school profiles, nearly 5,300 would need to have participated in work-based learning before graduation for MCPS to achieve its goal.
Work-based learning opportunities
The school district offers several work-based learning options for juniors and seniors, including apprenticeships and internships. According to MCPS, an apprenticeship is a paid experience with an employer in which students work during the school day or after school for a total of 450 hours over one year and attend one year of related classes or training. For example, students could become a dental assistant apprentice or an accounting apprentice or work in an apprenticeship in welding or plumbing.
An internship is paid or unpaid work experience with a sponsor and students work 150 hours to earn one internship credit. Students can take as little as 75 hours a semester to earn half an internship credit, or as much as 225 hours a semester to earn one and a half internship credits. Internship positions can include jobs such a teacher assistant or be in fields such as retail and hospitality.
At B-CC High, Principal Shelton Mooney said the school has seen a 37% increase — from 65 to 89 students – this school year in the number of students participating in an internship over last year’s total. But the numbers were lower than officials had hoped for. Mooney also noted that compared to the school’s demographics, fewer Black and Latino students are involved in the work-based learning opportunities than are white and Asian students. About 50% of B-CC’s school population is white, 21% identify as Hispanic, 16% as Black and about 6% as Asian, according to school data.
Factors that can influence student participation, Mooney told Bethesda Today, include “competing interests” such as International Baccalaureate courses, athletics and extracurricular activities. Plus, students interested in pursuing an internship or other work-based learning experience need to plan ahead to ensure they have the credits they need to graduate, Mooney said.
Many of the roughly one dozen students who participated in a focus group at B-CC attended by Bethesda Today said they learned about work-based learning options — primarily internships — from friends who had participated. The students said they learned a variety of skills through their work-based learning opportunities.
Tasia Mallombasang, who interns with Families4Families, a Washington D.C.- based nonprofit focused on combating food insecurity, said they have had to learn skills “on the fly.”
“My biggest job is like updating our website,” Mallombasang said. “[I had to] sort of improve what limited coding skills I had before.”
Students participating in the focus group said their internship experiences ranged from working with NASA to working as a teacher’s aide at a nearby elementary school.
While many of the students spoke highly of their internships, they said they also faced challenges in getting to participate in the opportunities. At B-CC, some students said their guidance counselors pushed them toward more traditional class schedules such as taking certain classes during a specified time frame, rather than letting them shift their schedule to explore work-based learning. Others said Black and Latino students may not participate as much as other students due to a lack of Black and Latino faculty at B-CC who can help motivate them to do so.
Quince Orchard High program draws 180 students
Quince Orchard High isn’t participating in the MCPS pilot, but the school’s leadership, including former Principal Beth Thomas who recently retired, took on the challenge of increasing work-based learning opportunities for the students, according to the school’s staff. Actions included the creation of a new role — college career community coordinator – that is now held by Samantha Castro. Castro works alongside Joe Lynch, the school’s work-based learning coordinator.
This year, 180 students are participating in work-based learning opportunities. Lynch said the work-based learning staff was focused on determining what worked for students so they can develop skills for the future.
“Things don’t happen out of nowhere,” Lynch told the Quince Orchard students participating in a focus group during the visit by Yang and Bethesda Today. “It’s about intentionality, the effort you all put into your work every day, to your internships … your future apprenticeships — all of these things are a reflection of the passion you have for your future.”
Several students in the Quince Orchard program said they had learned about work-based opportunities from posters hung around the school. The posters intrigued them, several said, and they wanted to know more about opportunities to gain work experience or find a career path to follow.
The students spoke of a range of experiences, from working in a local day care to becoming a dental apprentice, and said they learned lessons such as the importance of being punctual and how to work in high-stress environments.
Krasa, the MCPS supervisor of work-based learning, told the student group during Yang’s visit that the district would continue to grow and develop the program.
“Our goal is to help connect with employers throughout Montgomery County to identify experiential opportunities that you can access,” Krasa said. “That’s where the application of the learning takes place.”
