Mr. Heathman Prepares 11th-Grade Students for the Career Force – Junior Internships

Mr. Kelly Heathman has been leading the Junior internships over the last couple of years here at Village Tech. He prepares and equips students with real-life skills in how to network, market themselves, and appeal to employers with a strong resume and even some work experience.  That’s where the hands-on resume creation and training really come in handy.

“Students learn the life skills of what they’ll need to know once they go either into the career workforce, college, trade school, and what they’ll need afterward,” said Mr. Heathman.

He continued, “With the classes I teach, what we do is, we start from the beginning with writing cover letters and resumes, and we work on communications – how to write emails, how to talk on the phone, how to text message professionally instead of the “lingo” that they like to use. Then we do a couple of iterations of resumes and cover letters. Next, we’ll do a couple of different iterations of mock interviews here in the school. Then they start reaching out to business partners via email and phone calls and then go out and do the actual interviews with the Internship employer. 

So then they come back and there’s a process once they get the internship. They have to do a background check with the company, so this requires them to communicate back and forth with the company in a clear and professional manner.

Once the business contract is extended to the school by a business partner, the next step is that the business partner signs it. The parents need to sign for the student – it’s a requirement, and they have to go. If parents aren’t comfortable with it, we have to find another internship that is acceptable, as participation is mandatory.

As for the businesses that partner with us, I have a pool of people that we partner with every year, and it grows. Last year we found about 25 new partners, and this year we found 36 new partners, which is a huge deal. Last year we had 22 students interning with staff in the school. This year we placed 100% of our interns outside of the school with business partners. They already know staff in the school; it’s about networking, marketing yourself, and getting to know people (outside of the school). My business degree comes in handy, I get to teach everything that I learned in college.” – Mr. Heathman

This year’s Junior internships have just started, and are going strong. The students will be participating over the next couple of weeks, and we’re really looking forward to hearing more about their work journeys, as the internships progress.