(Milford)– Okoboji High School ranks number one among all of the high schools in the state when it comes to work-based learning opportunities. While the rankings were included for the first time in the Iowa Schools Performance Profiles, Principal Brian Downing says work-based learning is far from new for Okoboji High School. He says it is now in it’s 10th year…
“And that program requires all of our seniors to complete a 40 hour internship experience in a career field of their choice. It has evolved over the last 10 years. As we moved to a May term now students don’t do it all at the exact same time of year, they can start anytime from the summer before their senior year through their senior year and it takes on a lot of different schedules and formats. We’ve got some kids, a lot of them will do it here locally; they may do it when they have some extra time. A lot of our seniors have a shorter schedule. We have some that will travel. We’ve had kids go as far as California, Florida, Missouri. We had one kid that traveled overseas as a missionary as part of an internship, so. It really is very flexible and students can make of it what they want and it’s really been very impactful for a lot of kids.”
Downing says the proof of the success of the program at Okoboji High School is in the numbers…
“The average as you see on the graph is about 25 percent of students in Iowa high schools are engaging in work-based learning experience before they graduate whereas our percentage last year was 98.6 and what that meant was we had one student who just because of some unique circumstances wasn’t able to complete the internship, but every year that’s pretty much been a pretty consistent percentage for us. It was great to see. I think the second highest school was somewhere around 87 percent and what’s neat is that’s all 300 high schools in the state of Iowa. We’ve been kind of joking around here that it’s nice to win a state championship in anything and as a school to kind of feel like hey, it’s kind of a state championship in exposing kids to future career possibilities and as a school I feel like that connects really well with our mission.”
Downing adds the milestone not only highlights Okoboji High School’s leadership in innovative programming but also underscores the powerful outcomes of community partnerships, student exploration and a district-wide vision for success.
