Educator externships connect the classroom & workplace
Exciting things are happening in Southern Virginia, where the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) serves as a regional catalyst for economic transformation. With programming that ranges from summer STEM and sector-focused camps to ACT WorkKeys job profiling, IALR’s Advanced Learning division supports 15 K–12 school districts — in alignment with local and regional needs for workforce development.
By partnering with public and private sector businesses to host work-based learning (WBL), IALR hopes to help strengthen Virginia’s economy.
IALR offers an innovative WBL program for educators known as EXCITE, which stands for Exploring Careers through Industry Teacher Externships. Teachers and counselors refine old skills, gain new ones, learn about changing industry standards and skills needed for local jobs, and make connections to WBL opportunities for students.
How it began
In 2017, Julie Brown, Ph.D., vice president of advanced learning, began researching teacher externships with support from the Dan River Region Collaborative, a regional workforce partnership in Virginia. After using research to pitch the concept to the Danville Regional Foundation (DRF), IALR was awarded a $45,000 grant to offer $600 stipends to 25 educators each year for three years. The program ran in 2018 and 2019, and then the pandemic put a halt to our activities for two years.
Then, thanks to additional investments from the GO Virginia Region 3 Council and leadership in a couple of localities, we resumed offering the program in 2022, expanding from three school districts in our region to 15. This funding allowed us to award $800 stipends for up to 30 participating educators. And the goals was to build with a goal of further integrating workplace practices and policies into the classroom. Ultimately, in June and July 2022, a total of 21 educators from six school districts completed the EXCITE externship experience with 20 participating employers.
“The goal is to connect teachers with private sector businesses to learn about their industry and think on creative ways to integrate this real-world relevance into their respective classrooms,” said Brown.
How it works
EXCITE offers a weeklong externship experience for middle and high school teachers and counselors. Each day for the first four days, educators are placed in businesses (from 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.) to tour work sites, interview key staff, and shadow and observe various workers. The fifth day, a half day, gives educators a chance to debrief and reflect. They spend this time gathering and synthesizing information to design at least one lesson plan based on their experience(s). In addition to daily journals and site evaluations, educators are asked to select a job at each site and identify what skills and knowledge are necessary to conduct the tasks involved. This exercise helps them focus their curricula on relevant skill development needed for actual jobs in the area. And it also helps IALR determine gaps where we can provide programs and services without duplicating efforts at the district and school levels.
How employers benefit
In-kind donations of time and expertise are immensely valuable and provide employers an opportunity to show their commitment to their community. Through an educator externship program like EXCITE, employers can speak directly to educators to tell their stories and share their work-force needs. They can inform educators about their expectations of employees in various positions and offer input on curriculum, thereby contributing to the preparation of their future workforce.
When education and workforce connections are cultivated over time, excel-lent work-based learning opportunities naturally emerge. Employers can become guest speakers and mentors, host field trips, offer job shadows, and do so much more. Don’t underestimate the power of connecting employers directly with educators.
How educators benefit
For educators, the benefits of firsthand industry exposure are boundless. Teachers can design and implement classroom activities, projects, and work-based learning opportunities. Externships offer a fresh perspective that lets educators tie curriculum to real-world applications.
Educators gain an increased ability to explain the value of what students are learning, which often leads to cooperative learning. An added benefit is the cross-collaboration between educators. Since educators go in pairs to their work sites — sometimes with others from their own districts, sometimes with educators outside their districts — they learn to work together.
How we’re evaluating success
Educators completed multiple information-gathering documents for each day of their externships. This gave us a great deal of information specific to each business. They also each completed a program evaluation, wherein 100% of participants said that they would participate in this program again. Finally, they completed at least one lesson plan based on what they learned. Several educators created lesson plans based on the math required at various work sites, particularly in manufacturing. Other lesson plans were more business-specific.
Also, at the end of each weeklong externship, we conducted a three-hour debrief to talk about educators’ experiences. We learned about workplace culture and atmosphere, compared externships at the same locations, and discussed ways to incorporate their observations into curriculum development. Inevitably, this led to larger discussions about district and school needs. And this will help the educators and IALR develop appropriate support services and programming.
How we’re moving forward
IALR will host EXCITE again in 2023. Next year, it will be important to engage more with employers before the experience and provide sample schedules. Facility tours are useful, but the hope is that we can offer educators a more structured externship experience. Minimal adaptations may be made to the required documentation to improve data collection.
Further, it’s important to note that the teachers and counselors who participated saw the value of EXCITE not only for themselves and their classrooms, but also for district administration. Several participants commented that this would be an extremely helpful program for principals, superintendents, CTE directors and others. Program expansion might require an alternate structure. For example, rather than hosting four externship days in a row, we could spread out those four days over the whole year. In the end, educators rated the program’s value highly! So we will move forward with optimism.
Dana Wilson is a former WBL program coordinator at IALR.
