Many secondary schools offer cooperative education or work programs allowing students a taste of possible careers before they decide whether to go to college or technical school.
A number of the programs used today — in DuPage County and throughout the country — can be traced directly to Lake Park High School in Roselle, where teacher Lynne Bryla of Bloomingdale pioneered the Career Internship Program in 1993.
The 18-week program, which students can choose as one of their electives and take for credit, offers workshops in resume writing, job interviewing techniques, working with job placement services and 12-week internships.
“This program differs from work co-op (which was first offered at some schools in the 1940s), where kids may work part time the whole year and get paid,” Bryla said. Students are not paid during their internships at Lake Park, she said, but they are given the chance to experience far more of the facets of a profession than teenage workers usually get.
The seeds for the program were planted in the late 1980s when school and community members began some preliminary discussions about how to involve more students in the working world. Business leaders had communicated to the school district that they felt students were being ill-prepared for careers.
The program was implemented in 1993, and in 1995 it was honored twice, with the Exemplary Partnership Award from the Illinois Council on Business Education Partnerships and a Connections 2000 award for outstanding curricular innovation from Illinois State University.
“The course was first offered in 1993, and by 1996, it was starting to attract attention from other schools around the country,” Bryla said. “We’ve made presentations in Atlanta at the National Tech Prep conference in 1995 and at the same conference a year later in San Antonio, Texas. We get about 20 inquiries a year after a conference.”
One of the educators who was intrigued by Bryla’s message was Bob Handlin, principal of Delphi High School in Delphi, Ind., northeast of Lafayette. He saw Bryla and her colleague Terry Hurst of Grayslake, who together have developed most of the internship program and share the stage during their national presentations.
Handlin persuaded his school district superintendent, two board members and a teacher to accompany him to Roselle to see the program in action.
“The program intrigued me, as it offered a number of unique things,” Handlin said. “It was the first program I’d ever heard of featuring internships with no pay. It was also pass-fail, which I thought would attract a larger variety of students. We saw the program and came home to our service groups to see if there was any interest.”
Today, Delphi High School has copied Lake Park’s model. After a pilot program launched, the school has seen the program grow from 11 students in 1996 to 17 in 1997, with an expected enrollment of 24 next fall.
Closer to home, Jim Boyer, business and applied arts chairman at Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, said the internship program was begun there in 1995 with 90 students in the very first year.
“Students’ reactions have run the gamut from finding it absolutely wonderful and reaffirming the opinions they held about the field to discovering other related areas of work they didn’t even know existed,” Boyer said. “Still others said the work wasn’t for them and were glad they found out.”
Charlie Jett is the technical assistance provider working in DuPage County for the Illinois’ Education to Careers program, an arm of the School to Work Opportunities Act enacted by Congress in 1994. He has followed Bryla’s program closely and said its success is impressive.
“Lynne is to be commended for taking the initiative,” he said. “She has brought a work-based learning experience to a wider range of students who would not have otherwise even been involved,” referring to college-bound students who tend to focus only on academics. Jett said Illinois needs to be more on the cutting edge when it comes to educational initiatives and that Bryla is “a bright light of action against the dull glow of talk.”
“That line may sound corny,” Jett said, “but I can tell you that Illinois was one of the last states to receive any grant money from the School to Work initiative.” (Illinois recently received $54 million, with $9.12 million to be given to DuPage County.)
The program’s strengths, Bryla said, are its ability to attract a diversity of students and increased awareness about education and careers.
“This program has helped bring the reality of careers down to the high school level instead of waiting until after college is over,” Bryla said. “Too often, the thinking was finish high school, go to college and then decide about a career. Those aren’t the only options.”
“We feel the program gives students a tremendous opportunity to look at various aspects of a career, even if those aspects aren’t all positive,” Handlin said. “At least they’ll know if it’s right for them.”
Abby Bettilyon, a senior at Lake Park who is currently has an internship in the oncology department at Alexian Brothers Hospital in Elk Grove, said the experience has taught her not only about her intended field but also the kind of professional person she’d like to be.
“I plan on attending the University of Wisconsin this fall in a pre-med program, and I’ve seen many of the gruesome realities of it all,” she said. “Everyone said that seeing some of the bad aspects related to cancer would be a deterrent, but it has encouraged me even more to try to practice the more personal side of medicine. There’s a professional line, but still, you need a level of compassion.”
