Lexington-Richland School District Five
Career and Technical Education
Internship Opportunities
The mission of School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties, in partnership with our stakeholders, is to prepare all students to be college and career-ready by providing a challenging curriculum in a safe, secure, diverse, and equitable learning environment focused on academic, social, and emotional growth and development
Internships for high school students provide valuable opportunities for young individuals to gain real-world work experience, explore potential career paths, and develop essential skills.
SC Department of Education Guidelines for
Work-Based Learning
WBL is sustained interaction with industry or community professionals in a real worksite environment. The experiences may also include practicable, simulated environments at an educational institution that allow firsthand experience with tasks aligned with the curriculum.
Perkins V vision states that work-based learning is to cultivate the development of a skilled workforce and a responsive workforce system that meets the needs of business and industry, leading to sustainable growth, economic prosperity, and global competitiveness for South Carolina. Per the WIOA, work-based learning is defined as a structured learning experience at the worksite for a specific timeframe that leads to a career path.
WBL is a school-coordinated, sponsored, coherent sequence of workplace experiences related to each student’s career goals and interests based on instructional preparation and performed in partnership with local businesses, industries, or other organizations in the community. WBL enables students to apply classroom instruction in a real-world business or service-oriented work environment.
Liability and certificates of coverage are district-specific decisions. They should be reviewed with sponsoring business/industry worksite supervisor, student, parents, and the sponsoring school representative as placement is coordinated for the student.
Internship: A progressive, school-sponsored experience that places students in real worksite environment setting to develop, and practice career-related knowledge and skills needed for a specific level job role. An internship provides hands-on experience in a particular industry or occupation related to a student’s career interests, abilities, and goals. The student observes business functions and actively engages with assigned job role outlined in the training agreement and evaluation plan. The worksite employee is the student’s supervisor.
The training agreement outlines the expectations and responsibilities of the sponsoring school and worksite’s partnership, including a specified number of hours in the training agreement with skills and objectives for the student to master during the placement.
The intern works assigned schedule specific to worksite supervisor’s teaching and learning availability in agreement with sponsoring school. An internship typically lasts three to six months, depending on hours of completion requirements. Internships may or may not include financial compensation.
Prior to an internship, the student receives the established criteria and guidelines from the worksite supervisor.
Throughout the internship, the worksite supervisor evaluates the student, providing feedback to sponsoring school representative.
The training agreement and evaluation plan should be maintained for two years after the student graduates from high school.
Academic credit, activities, compensation, and work hours are district-specific and may vary. *Internship is a career-ready qualifier.
CTE Internship Work-Based Credit-Bearing Course
The CTE Internship Work-Based Credit-Bearing Course must be aligned with the student’s Individual Graduation Plan (IGP) and pathway.
A mutually developed training agreement that defines a combination of objectives/skills to be mastered specific to the CTE course and industry-defined competencies within the career pathway must be documented and kept on file for at least two years after the student graduates from high school. Graded assignments related to the course content and aligned with the school’s grading scale are required.
Regularly scheduled and unannounced work-site visits are to be conducted and documented by the content-specific, certified teacher.
A work-site evaluation should be conducted during the internship experience created from the training agreement and aligned with the world-class skills and characteristics from the Profile of the SC Graduate.
Summer WBL Credit-Bearing Course experience hours, which begin on July 1, may be counted toward the number of hours required for the school year if the work experience is supervised by the content-specific, certified teacher and all other guidelines are followed.
Each school district must provide Certificates of Insurance Liability and evidence of student insurance coverage with respect to participating in the work-based learning experience to the S.C. School Boards Property and Casualty Insurance Trust Fund and the SC School Boards Workers Compensation Insurance Trust Fund.
All required paperwork must be complete and kept on file for at least two years after the student graduates from high school.
*The Center Only*