LANSDALE – Teachers, guidance counselors and administrators at North Penn High School (NPHS) are diligently working to create a career-focused, credit-bearing learning opportunity for rising seniors at North Penn and they need your help!

At the start of the 2016-2017 school year, NPHS Special Education and Math teacher, Mr. Dominic Calamia, partnered with NPHS College and Career Counselor, Mr. Pat Brett, and guidance counselors at North Penn to create a summer course geared towards the career interests of incoming seniors.

The Career Apprenticeship Program at North Penn will offer rising seniors the opportunity to explore career interests in a hands-on manner by working at an off-campus location to complete an internship-like program during the summer months for 0.5 credits toward graduation. In order to offer this, NPHS would like to establish partnerships with local businesses/corporations that will accept a student(s) into their workplace and provide them the opportunity to authentically observe, learn and meaningfully participate in a professional career path they hope to pursue. The program will utilize supervision by both a NPHS supervisor and a community sponsor.

The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that up to 80 percent of students in college change their major at least once during their undergraduate years. This means that of the 840 college-bound NPHS seniors who graduated in June of 2016, over 650 students will change their major in college. What’s perhaps even more frightening is that this figure does not include the numerous graduates that will eventually enter the workforce to find they really do not enjoy the career path in which they have worked tirelessly to achieve. In so doing, these graduates will expend valuable time, energy and dollars on an education.

The drive behind offering a course such as the Career Apprenticeship Program is the idea that if students are better prepared to make a decision regarding their future endeavors, student resources would be saved and North Penn graduates would have a better developed plan for their own future prior to reaching college.

North Penn High School is looking for businesses who might be interested in partnering with them on behalf of this innovative academic opportunity for students. For more information about the program and business requirements, please contact NPHS Career Apprenticeship Coordinator Dominic Calamia at [email protected].