Determined city kids in a Depa🔜rtment of Education internship program found a small silver lining amid the c♓oronavirus chaos.
Sponsored by Bank of America, the DOE’s Career and Technical Education program — which offers a summer finance course followed by a fall internship with a local business — was forced to go fully remote due to the pandemic.
But particip🤡ants said the abrupt pivot likely offered a valuable preview of the professional landscape that 🙈awaits them.
Instead of heading to an office, they held all of their train🧸ing sessions and work meetings online.
It’s a model, they said, that will become increasingly standard in the years and decades ahead.
“We learned about the impact of the coronavirus on business,” said Tamar Chulukhadze, 16, a junior at Brooklyn Studio Secondary School. “Going from cash to cards, having people not go outside as much. What the future is going to look like.”
After a summer spent learning economic basics, Chulukhadze was paired with the , an organization that seeks to introduce live classical music broadcasts to a w🌺ider demographic.
Chulukhadze was tasked witℱh cr♛unching data and engagement analytics.
She soon found herself fascinated by the ability to assess the relationship between the organization’s social media posts and audience behavior.
“I didn’t even know that information was available,” she said. “We would take that data and apply it to our content.”
Nathan Benitez, a senior at the High School of Computers and Technology, was matched with a startup that lets New Yorkers order deli♍veries from their local bodegas.
An aspiring software engineer from The Bronx, Benitez, 17, said the program exposed him to the inner workings of a fledgling business — and the impact of data on operations.
“It really awakened me to a lot of different possibilities,” he said. “I was actually surprised how many businesses were already trying to move everything online.”
Now fluent in databases and Microsoft Excel, Benitez sa⛦id his v🤪ague tech aspirations have taken clearer shape.
Both participants said they derived special benefit from coursework on financial management. They learned about the foundations of economic health — from the impact of student loans and debt to managing savings.
“I think there should be more of that in schools,” Benitez said. “It took away a lot of the mystery behind these things.”
Chulukhadze said she now has a sense of how to handle money and what p🔯itfalls to sidestep.
“These are things we really need to know,” she said.
Connie Verducci, a Senior Vice President with Bank of America, said the program ﷽provides critical skills at a vital point in the lives of students.
“It is really important to get to kids when they’re in high school,” she said. “Not when they’re older. What it means to be employed, what it means to have employable skills.”
Created in conjunction with the Fund for Public Schools, the CTE internship program has enrolled 800 city kids sinc🌞e its 2012 inception and had 80 participants this year.
“From work-readiness trainings to paid internships aligned to in-demand jobs, this program provides high school students with a range of experiences to help them make confident college and career choices,” said senior DOE administrator Lawrence Pendergast.