Growing Your Team through IT Internships

As an IT leader in the K-12 environment, you have a wealth of talent from within the community you serve. I’m talking, of course, about high school students, particularly juniors and seniors. These young people grew up in a technology-based world. They already possess basic skills that just need to be honed to be of excellent service to your organization.

By offering paid internships within your district’s career and technology education (CTE) program, you can not only acquire useful manpower but also develop future full-time employees. In my previous role as an IT leader, I experienced some very rewarding outcomes with early internships. Let me share those with you.

In January of 1998, I landed in Georgia’s Houston County School District. Houston County was a large school district, with over 30 schools at the time and more than 20,000 students. It was big enough to have the resources for growth, but small enough to allow me to be more hands-on in the upcoming growth.

January of 1998 was a period during which the Internet was just beginning to emerge as an opportunity for teaching and learning in K-12 education. At that time, the only schools in the district that had Internet access could be counted on one hand.  My immediate mandate as Director of Technology was to bring Internet access to every one of the approximately thousand classrooms in the district. I had support and commitment from both the Superintendent and a progressive Board of Education. However, funds were limited.

At that time, the Georgia Lottery provided grants for Internet access to schools, based on student population.  District-wide, we had less than $500,000 with which to work. The cost of cables (both fiber optic and, at that time, Category 5 Ethernet), framing for the racks in the wiring closets, switches, routers, and all the other items needed to power the network would consume most of the grant. That would leave very little for labor costs.

Fortunately, our community was served by a local technical college. We offered paid internships to students in that institution. They worked an evening shift between 3:00 PM, when schools were dismissed, and 11:00 PM five nights a week. We employed a full-time Network Engineer, who trained and managed the nightly operations. At the end of the year, we had completed building dozens of local area networks on each of our campuses and connected them to a wide-area network across the entire county.

Building a network is not a glamorous job, and the end results are not immediately visible. However, you can’t drive your Mercedes or Lexus down the highway if somebody didn’t first construct that highway. Moreover, the students participating in those internships gained valuable hands-on experience in that construction effort.

I’ve kept in touch with several of the students who participated in those internships and am happy to report that many, if not most, of them have transitioned into careers in Information Technology.

That initial project, though, led me to further explore the concept of internships. But this time, it was during the summer months, while students are away from campuses. That is the best time for technology teams to act upon improvements, maintenance, and additions to existing networks. For that effort, I reached into our high school student population, offering summer internships to rising juniors and seniors. To avoid conflicts with child labor laws, the interns had to be at least sixteen years old. The program began with training the students on network infrastructure tasks.  From there, they were assigned to teams that were led by experienced IT technicians for the remainder of the internship.

Again, many of the young people that participated in those summer internships went on to successful careers in Information Technology.  Some grew in both experience and knowledge to the point that they even started their own network services companies.

These and other internships have been among the most rewarding experiences of my career.

As previously mentioned, the honing of raw skills to make the intern successful and a meaningful part of your team is an important element. SchoolDay Academy, powered by Coursera, has curated a collection of courses that are designed to enhance the skills of the entry-level interns. These include basic troubleshooting skills, hardware and software installation and maintenance, basic network knowledge, and more.