More than 40 GGUSD students are engaging in a powerful summer internship experience through Orange County United Way’s Youth Career Connections program, which combines work-based learning with career experiences in a wide-range of professional industries. The internship program is a capstone course for incoming seniors enrolled in GGUSD’s high school Career and Technical Education (CTE) Career Pathways.
Students spend a week in the classroom with GGUSD CTE teachers to build communication, collaboration and research skills, work on their resumes, create LinkedIn profiles and hear from industry guest speakers. Two GGUSD teachers team-teach the class and make site visits to monitor students’ progress on the job.
The work-based internship takes place in July and students return to the classroom in August to reflect and present to their classmates about what they learned. At the completion of the of the program, students earn 10 credits and CTE completion certificates.
The internship opportunities cover a wide range of industry sectors including arts, media, and entertainment, engineering and architecture, health services and medical technology, and information and computer technology.