Giving Compass' Take:

• Education Dive explains how student internships can help youths find their passions, while also expanding job and career opportunities in the future.

• What skills would serve students the best? How can nonprofits support more development in this area?

• Here's a look at the big picture for high school internships and their benefits. 

Brenda Masservy is rarely surprised anymore by the kind of internships seniors at Weston High School in Massachusetts secure for their final three weeks of school. Many students find positions with firms local to the Boston area (Weston is about 15 miles west of the city), while other students travel as far as China and Japan.

The internships are meant to give students a window into a future career that interests them before they start college — perhaps architecture, medicine or even, yes, the job of an illusionist.

“I had a student who wanted to be magician and I had never had that happen before,” Masservy said in an interview. “The student came up with name of someone they’d seen on Ellen DeGeneres, and I reached out to that person in Los Angeles and they agreed to let them do an internship for three weeks. They even continued for the summer.”

It’s long been understood that a student’s education is not made up of what they glean solely in the classroom. Children head out in to the world early, whether that’s during a field trip, or a summer learning program through a local library. Internships, which typically crop up during the later part of their high school years, are another opportunity for children to see how their learning plays in the wider world, helping them understand why they learned algebra, studied grammar rules and examined the structure of our civil society.

Read the full article about student internships by Lauren Barack at Education Dive.