by Margot Locker
I recently spoke with Kathleen FitzGerald, a teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, about her internship and service-learning course. Ms. Fitzgerald has taught this course for the past 3 years to seniors at CRLS, and uses portions of the GoodWork Toolkit as a framing device and as a text for the course.
Ms. FitzGerald was hired to initiate the internship program at CRLS, and designed a class where students are placed in internships (which they attend 10 hours per week) supported by a seminar in school every other week. She was given the Toolkit by a mentor teacher at her school and found it the perfect way to discuss ideas of meaningful work and personal values with respect to her students’ internships. She has devised a course where students begin their semester discussing ideas of good work, and the meaning of engagement, ethics, and excellence in their lives and in a broader sense. When asked about her goals for the course, she replied, “I would love to allow them to reflect on their values. I also want to discuss the transition from school to career, work readiness, and engage in bigger picture questions with my students.” Students reflect on their weekly experiences at their internships, answering the question “how does my work relate to good work?”
Ms. FitzGerald’s thoughts on how her 17 and 18 year old students interact with the concepts of good work were interesting and thought-provoking. In talking about engagement, she reflected that this is often a priority for the teenagers in her course. She explained, “they are really interested in the question of engagement, wanting to make sure they are having a good time no matter where they are. There is a balancing act, there are always moments when you are doing something that is are not thrilling, but it is fulfilling a larger goal for you, are you connected to it, is it taking you where you want to go?” She hopes her students can leave the course understanding engagement in a broader sense, especially in its relation to excellence and ethics.
She attributes their perspectives on the 3 E’s to their social development, their position as high school seniors and limited “real world” work experience. In thinking about excellence, Ms. FitzGerald worries that students have developed a skewed notion of what it means to be excellent. “I worry about their construction of excellence. To some, it seems to mean they have tried hard enough, rather than met a standard. I worry about what will happen when there are fewer formal evaluations and they need to determine excellence from within.”
In her class, Ms. FitzGerald hopes to help develop students’ thinking about themselves, meaningful work, and their personal values. She finds it frustrating that high schools today do not give students the space to pause and reflect on their work in relation to their lives and their values, and thus hopes to provide her students with this space in her class. She has them grapple with bigger picture questions, and as she told me, wants them “thinking about who they are and what their ethics are,” and hopes “they can leave the course with a deeper understanding of themselves as a student and worker.”