Experiences & Placements Defined
The District, in an effort to provide students with varied and meaningful learning experiences, encourages the development of learning opportunities for students outside the classroom. These opportunities carry with them responsibilities and liabilities that need to be addressed when setting them up and when placing individual students.
Career related learning experiences, for purposes of understanding insurance and liability issues, are categorized as Community Placements or Internal 4J Placements.
Community Placements Defined
Career related learning experience placements can be made in private businesses, public agencies and nonprofit organizations in the community. The descriptions below cover the categories of career related learning experiences available to students.
- Job Shadowing: Short-term opportunities for students to explore career interests by observing work at the work site. Students may make one or a series of visits of varied lengths to various work places and spend time with individual workers to see what specific jobs entail.
- Internship: A structured non-paid work experience that integrates school and work-based experiences. Internships are often an extension of a shadowing experience that last longer than the job shadow placement. Students are engaged in a series o f learning experiences at the worksite that relates to school-based learning.
- Mentorship: A non-paid learning experience in which the student has a formal relationship with a work-site role model who provides career insight and information and teaches the student specific work-related skills.Non-work related mentorship experiences for at-risk students are also available.
- Work Experience: A paid or non-paid career-oriented work experience that is tied to school lessons through formal training agreements, a formal learning plan and mentoring by work-place personnel. Both paid and non-paid experiences earn student s credit toward graduation. Students must earn at least minimum wage in paid placements.
- Apprenticeships (Registered Youth): Structured, paid, on-the-job training for students 16 years and up who are enrolled in a technical or professional program that leads to a high school diploma or Advanced Certificate of Mastery. Part-time paid positions must offer minimum wage or more, and provide 2,000 to 6,000 hours of work and related training over a two to five year period.
- Business/Work-Site Tours: Work-site visits are specialized field trips designed to introduce students to occupations that correspond to Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM) areas. Students tour businesses and industries to observe work processes and occupations, get an on-site introduction to careers and the world of work and to ask questions of people on the job. (Liability and responsibility issues related to this activity are covered in Auto Accidents & Insurance.)
Internal 4J Placements Defined
Internal 4J school-to-work placements can include any of the types of experiences available to students in community placements. However, because the work occurs at district-owned facilities, liability and insurance issues are handled through normal routes always used by the district. (An approved volunteer who is working with the student at district facilities, qualifies as an internal 4J career related learning experiences supervisor.)
- Internal 4J School-To-Work Experience: All paid and non-paid career related learning experiences which occur at district facilities and are supervised by a 4J school-to-work supervisor. Job shadows, mentorships, paid and unpaid work experiences, internships and apprenticeships can all be organized for students at district facilities. For example, a student interested in teaching can job shadow a teacher, another student might work as a paid employee in Food Services and still another might participate in an unpaid internship in the Transportation Department.
- School-Based Enterprises: Business ventures created and/or operated by students within a school. School-based enterprises are often designed to meet a need that exists in the local economy while providing entrepreneurial, professional, technica l and academic education for the students involved.
Check with Risk Management Services during your product or service development process. There may be unexpected liability from the sale of products or services.
