Teaching Elementary Students Job Skills With an Apprenticeship Program
Schools can empower students to develop skills like applying and interviewing, collaborating, and taking responsibility.
Your content has been saved!
Go to My Saved Content.
As educators, we want our students to be set up for success in our classroom and for life beyond school. I had been thinking about how to best support my students with building the soft skills necessary to be successful both in the classroom and in the real world, as employees. I wanted to find a way for them to start building those skills now, and that idea sparked what is now our Astro Apprenticeship program.
The Astro Apprenticeship program is an opportunity for elementary school students to experience the job application process and gain work experience. This program helps students to gain confidence, see the connection between their classwork and life beyond school, and make a contribution to their school community. To put it in their words, “It’s grown-up time.”
THE APPLICATION PROCESS
To implement something like this in your own school, you’ll want to start by setting up a job website to introduce students to the possible jobs they can apply for and create an application for each job. We created a job website using Google Sites with descriptions of the available jobs and a link to the application. Our current positions include student store managers, library assistants, event planners, and assembly crew.
Our student store managers work with our student store staff and secretary to take inventory, fulfill the orders, package them up, and give them to our secretary for students to pick up. They also make suggestions for new products for the student store.
Our library assistants work with the librarian to ensure that the library books are organized and help create fun displays to encourage other students to read. Our assembly crew works with me to think of the theme for our upcoming assembly and then helps to plan the presentation for the assembly. They also need to communicate with teachers for any awards that are given out during the assembly.
Finally, the event planners work with our PTA to help plan our family evening events. They help create the budget, make posters to advertise the event, and plan the activities.
We created an application that asks students to share the skills they have that would make them a good candidate for the position. Students also need to include personal references—the name of someone outside of school who would recommend them and a staff member who would recommend them. We set the application up as a Google Form.
Next, you’ll want to consider how students will complete the application and what support they may need to do so. At my school, students who need extra support complete their application with me, a counselor, or a special education or English language teacher. Because students will engage in interviews next, these same teachers or counselors will often help in the next step of the process.
BUILDING STUDENTS’ INTERVIEW SKILLS
The next step, the interviews, is where students get to practice the real-world employment skills we hoped to build with this program. Interviews can be scary for everyone, so getting our students used to approaching interviews with confidence from a young age felt particularly important.
When considering how to set up the interview process, you’ll want to think about when and where the interviews will happen, what questions students will answer, and what support they may need to be successful.
For our interviews, we decided to ask students the following: “Why are you interested in this job, and what skills do you have that would make you a good fit?”
To support students, we often conduct interviews in small groups or with the help of a bilingual teacher. This is my favorite part of the process. The students take the interviews very seriously—some of them even dress up for it. I’m always impressed with their thoughtful answers.
EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS
Once the interviews are completed, students sign their employment contracts. When considering how to set up this part of the process, it is helpful to think about what it means to be in the apprenticeship program at your school and what benefits your students will get for participating.
In my school, our contract outlines the expectations for being an apprentice such as collaborating with their teammates, completing work they may miss in class while they are working, and following the behavioral expectations of the school. It also details the compensation. Yes, the students receive payment for their work. They are paid with credit for our student store. Every student who completes the application and interview process is hired as an apprentice.
The students keep their same apprenticeship for about half the year, and then when the new semester starts, we open a new application. Students can apply to keep their same apprenticeship or try a new one. Students who haven’t tried an apprenticeship can apply at that time. Over the course of the year, we have over 75 students work as apprentices. At the end of each term, they complete an exit interview about what they liked about their apprenticeship and what they would change. It is this feedback that we use to adapt the positions for the next round.