Dive Brief:

• Michigan's Hamilton Community Schools is developing two programs to pair students with local businesses to gain work experience.
• One program, Connections, offers students a chance to explore potential careers and connect their career goals to their academic work.
• The second, IChallengeU, offers students a personalized learning experience that involves solving a real world problem in partnership with a local business.

Dive Insight:

The program gives students a chance to test out potential careers early on and get a sense of how their academic work can be more relevant to their future careers. 

“By exposing our students to project-based learning and business industries, they could see all levels of a company that they might work in,” Superintendent David Tebo told District Administration. “They see why they need to prototype, fail, reflect on failure and make another prototype. They see why they need to know how to speak so they can present an idea or know how algebra is used in the real world of business.”