Apologia (A REVIEW)

Some times I can't believe we are already to this point. The point at which we are thinking about college, jobs, and possibly internships. It seems like just yesterday this was all so far away, and we could just think about it another day. My daughter will be a Junior next year, and has been thinking a lot about this, but an Internship for High School Credit had never crossed our minds. This is a different kind of curriculum book than we're used to from Apologia Educational Ministries, as we have only ever used their science and writing curriculums before, but were happy to give it a try.

My daughter wasn't ready at this point to decide or apply for an actual internship right now, but reading through the book that we received makes me excited for the possibility of doing something like this for her senior year. This workbook basically walks a high schooler through the process of thinking about, planning, preparing, and applying for an internship for a half or whole credit of high school credit. An internship being time spent working or helping alongside someone in a certain field of work who is willing to give the student enough hours to gain experience and look at a possible credit.

Introduction
The book starts out with what an internship is, the history, and the many benefits of having an internship. Some of those benefits listed include: Explore a career, learn day-to-day job responsibilities, discover job likes and dislikes, focus more closely on a college major, bolster a college application, gain experience related to career goals, increase scholarship opportunities, gain marketable skills, increase potential job offers, etc.

Part I
After the introduction, in the getting started section, there is a bit about determining which internship to pick, and how to choose a company. The student would probably want to find something in an area or career that they are interested in. Preparation, receiving high school credit, writing a resume and letter, and the interview are also covered in this section.

Part II
This section is information for the parents. It covers things like child labor laws, and transcripts. It covers how to include an internship on a transcript so that the colleges will look at that internship as acceptable credit. It also talks about how to grade the progress through this course with the weekly worksheets that the student completes throughout the internship.

Part III
This is the first semester section. There are weekly worksheets  for each week in this section along with semester goals at the beginning. A lot of record keeping, but also some great questions about experiences, thoughts about the job, and work performance.

Part III: A glimpse at the first worksheets in the first semester section of the book.

Part IV
This is the second semester. Not as many weekly worksheets because the student should be pretty familiar with a lot of the ins and outs of their internship. Instead, there are biweekly worksheets with activities written out for each 2 week spread. See example below.

Part IV: A glimpse of the worksheet spread for the second semester.

Part V
This is the course wrap-up. This section includes the final writing assignment which is summarizing the work experiences, and reflecting on the worksheets from the year. It also talks about writing a thank-you note to the supervisor thanking them for their time, and possibly obtaining a letter of recommendation.

That is the basic layout of this course. I feel like it could help guide my high schooler through a successful internship for high school credit year. If you'd like to see what others had to say about this course or another course how to homeschool, you can click on the banner below.