Internships for Community Action

With the generous support of the Rowland Foundation, Rutland High School has been engaged in a process of building personalized learning opportunities for students. Currently, some of our students are pursuing concentrations in either Global Studies or STEM, and many of them are researching and creating Capstone projects.

We plan to research and build an internship program which will allow a broader population of students to extend their classroom learning into community action. Students will choose a topic of personal interest and global import and, either before or after completing a Capstone project, pursue that passion in a local setting. Our goal is to lay the necessary groundwork and establish relationships with a variety of local businesses, corporations, schools, and nonprofit organizations that will help us provide a plethora of community-based learning opportunities for our students.

Students who complete a Capstone project first will apply their academic knowledge in a “real world” setting, taking action to make meaningful progress on the issue of their choice. Other students might use an internship experience in the community to discover and fuel their interest in research on a particular topic. We hope to provide enough options so that, ultimately, each student at RHS will graduate with a commitment to self-directed, lifelong learning and will leave here feeling empowered to enact positive change in both our community and our world.