Every spring, after Advanced Placement exams conclude in mid-May, students enter Hastings High School and are welcomed with an eerie quiet that blankets the halls and classrooms; the seniors have vanished! But where have they disappeared to?
While some travel far and wide and others never leave Hastings, the senior class engages in the Hastings High School Senior Alternatives Internship Program, which is designed to give seniors an opportunity to explore careers, engage in passion projects, learn new skills, and apply old ones. For at least 20 hours a week, students are required to work on their internships, which encompass many fields from administrative work to art projects to education. Supervising teachers are assigned to students, and their job is to check in with students each week. Students are also required to acquire a mentor who will guide them through the internship, advise them on relevant topics, and send four weekly status reports to the supervising teachers. This program is led by Mr. Dennis Kiely, who also teaches physical education at HHS.
As senior internship season approaches, curiosity amongst the senior class is growing regarding where everyone is choosing to spend their final weeks of high school. The Buzzer released a survey for seniors to share how their preparation for internships has gone so far and to gauge how they feel about the program in general. Many students are staying local, working on projects like designing games, being a teacher aid at Hillside, practicing embroidery projects, and cooking meals from different cultures. Others are doing projects like working in a miniature terrain modeling store, working with the Greenburgh government to make informational videos, volunteering at the Westchester Medical Center in the Infection Control Department, and even interning at BOCES in partnership with Ford in Scarsdale.
Every survey respondent expressed enthusiasm about the program. One person said, “it gives us real life experience working a normal job in a field we’re interested in.” Another respondent said, “The experience that we get working, or some form of development that’ll help us in the real world, is definitely needed as not a lot of us have that experience.”
Some others stated that the internships offer a fun way to end their high school career that’s out of school and offers a transition period between school and graduation. Seniors are most looking forward to working with other people in their chosen field, having more time to spend time with friends as the year comes to a close, learning new skills, and getting into the mindset of waking up early and driving to work every day.
As seniors prepare for their internships, they are required to pick their projects and find mentors. All of the interviewed seniors stated that the preparation work so far has been the perfect workload. Many seniors stated that finding a mentor was easy, as they had previous connections in the fields they were interested in, while some expressed that they encountered some difficulty in finding mentors that specialized in exactly what they were interested in. A lot of seniors will be under the guidance of Hastings High School teachers as their mentors.
The Hastings High School Senior Alternatives Internship Program is a great opportunity for seniors to wrap up their high school experiences. Internships will last from May 19 to June 13, and seniors will present their experiences to their underclassmen peers on June 16. There is a lot of excitement about internships amongst the senior class, and students are looking forward to graduating with real-life experiences under their belt.
