The Gap Year Internship: Using Research to Create Meaningful Programming for Youth
We used equity-based research insights to create an internship opportunity for youth taking a gap year due to the pandemic.
By Kat Chen
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted schooling plans for students, with those effects falling disproportionately on lower-income students, first generation students, and students of color. Foundry10 used equity research from the spring and summer to create an internship program aimed at supporting youth who have been affected by the pandemic. Here we talk about how we created the Gap Year internship program, how it connects with our Gap Year research, and how other organizations can use equity-based research to create meaningful programming for youth.
With the coronavirus pandemic mounting in the spring and summer, students faced a lot of uncertainty about the coming school year this fall. Though the pandemic continues to present challenges for students of every age, there was an extra burden on high school seniors.
The process of applying to colleges and deciding what to do after high school is difficult enough; high school students graduating last spring had to make these choices in the midst of COVID-19 and a future that looked murky at best.
“I remember getting my official acceptance letter two weeks after the Washington Stay At Home order was put into effect,” said Chiara Power, a recent high school graduate and a Gap Year intern at foundry10. “At that time there was so much unknown that I thought I may still have a chance to have a normal freshman year.”
Like Chiara Power, many students were unsure about their after high school plans due to the pandemic. A poll from the Art & Science Group in April found that roughly one in six high school seniors in the U.S. were thinking about changing their plans to attend college in the fall because of the pandemic. Other findings from early summer showed that many students intended to delay their enrollment to college or that they were deciding to enroll in a university closer to home because of financial concerns.
Our Research team at foundry10 conducted a research study this summer about how many students were planning to take a gap year between high school and college. We found that just over fifty percent of students in our study had considered taking a gap year due to the coronavirus pandemic, and that twenty percent of students actually took a gap year for the 2020–2021 academic year. Of those students, roughly one in ten said that they decided to take a gap year because of COVID-19.
“I decided to take time off when the college I was planning to attend announced their fall quarter was going to be online due to COVID. On the practical side, I didn’t want to pay full tuition for online classes, which don’t offer the same opportunities as going to school in person; and for my own sake, I wanted to avoid online classes because they’re very difficult for me to be successful in due to my learning disorders,” said Taylar, who graduated high school last spring and interned with foundry10 this fall. “My decision to take a gap year was pretty much based in negatives, which isn’t ideal, but it’s a pandemic!”
In a normal year, there are many opportunities for students who decide to take a gap year. Most students who decide to delay college spend their gap year with internships to gain work experience, or travel. However, 2020 was not a normal year. The options for students taking a gap year were limited with increased travel restrictions and a diminished job market.
“Typically taking a gap year means traveling a bunch or making some money all while truly “finding yourself”. Obviously right now is not a good time to travel, and even finding a job is a little more difficult,” said Chiara Power, who chose to take a gap year after graduating.
Though there are ways for students to make the most of their gap year during the pandemic, members of our team at foundry10 got together over Zoom and wondered if there was anything that we could do to help.
Those conversations inspired us to create a new internship program. We got to work, using background research from our Gap Year Research study to create an internship program for the fall.
Anna Cechony, part of the Gap Year Internship team, explained how foundry10 is in a unique position to help serve young people who had chosen to take a gap year. “[I]t seemed like opportunities for students who just graduated from high school were necessary, but there weren’t very many of them,” she said. “We have the ability to move really quickly, and when we came up with the idea over the summer, we were able to pull something together really fast.”
The internship, called the Gap Year Internship, was for high school seniors who graduated in the 2019–2020 school year and were planning to take a gap year due to the pandemic. With current research showing that many students had decided to take a gap year and that there was a lack of opportunities available to them, we wanted to offer students the chance to explore their interests and gain paid working experience, like they might in a regular gap year.
We used these research insights to create an internship opportunity for youth that we hoped would be meaningful, and would directly address the needs from young people that we were hearing.
“Back in March and April, when COVID-19 first hit the U.S., we were reading research and news about how more and more students were choosing not to enroll in college in fall 2020 because of family commitments or financial constraints or because online school wouldn’t offer them the support they needed,” said Ella Shahn, a member of our Gap Year Internship team. “All of these factors around post-high school plans were disproportionately impacting lower-income students, first generation students and students of color.”
“We created this internship because we wanted to create an opportunity for recent high school graduates to explore career and educational possibilities while gaining some concrete professional skills. We wanted to make it as low-barrier and flexible as possible.”
We hosted three gap year interns this fall: one on our STEM team, one on our Drama team, and one on our Writing team. The interns applied for the position that was most interesting to them and worked with their program teams to complete a project over the course of the 10-week paid internship.
Each intern was mentored by members of their program team, but completed work independently. They were treated like real employees and worked in collaboration with full-time staff members. Project-based learning and authentic work experience are central components of our flagship internship program for youth, the High School Internship Program, and our team wanted to bring those elements into the Gap Year Internship.
“We chose to host a gap year intern because we wanted to push ourselves to support youths and young adults in new and different ways during this pandemic,” said Tania Dearden, a Program Developer on foundry10’s STEM team and one of the mentors for the STEM intern. “We believe that real work experience is incredibly valuable to figuring out what you want to do professionally, and we wanted to provide this value to a young adult going through this trying time.”
Leah Adcock-Starr, a Dramatic Arts Program Developer who helped mentor the Drama intern, talked about how important it was to support students whose lives have been directly affected by the pandemic: “We loved the potential and possibilities of mentoring and working with a young person in this really rich transitional moment of their training and career development right in between high school and secondary education — someone whose life and educational life were being dramatically impacted by the realities of COVID — and see how we could create opportunities for curiosity, learning, growth, and support.”
The program was an opportunity for the interns to try new things and explore their interests during their gap year. “I hope above all that interns gain more confidence in asking questions, sharing their perspectives, advocating for themselves, and trying new things!” said Ella Shahn. “The structure of foundry10 gives all of us a lot of agency in creating shared visions and figuring how we can collaborate with others to make them happen, and I hope interns get to experience that process.”
Those hopes resonated with the interns. “My ideal goal from when I first decided to take a gap year was to take advantage of having unstructured time between high school and college. Since I’m not able to have a job outside of my house due to at-risk family members, I really wanted to spend time on new and existing writing projects, and expand my writing practice in general,” said Taylar Christianson, who was a Gap Year intern on foundry10’s Writing team this fall. “It’s been especially valuable to get experience driving the direction of my own projects and holding myself accountable in a team, which aren’t always skills that get developed in an academic setting! It’s definitely been a gradual adjustment, but I feel very grateful for the opportunity to develop that ability in a friendly environment.”
“I applied to the foundry10 Drama Gap Year Internship in hopes to not only get some work experience but also to keep myself immersed in Drama,” said Chiara Power. “Drama and theatre were such a huge part of my life for the past 11 years and COVID and quarantine have taken me away from it for the longest period in my life. I was really seeking an outlet in which I could stay in touch with my passion.”
Though the internship was youth-centered, it also created value for foundry10 and the program teams who hosted an intern. Youth can provide new ideas, fresh perspectives, and unique insights that help improve the work that we do as an organization. Tania Dearden expressed that it was valuable to the STEM team to have an inside view on what youth are thinking about right now. “Our intern has brought the perspective and voice of a young person to our team. She was able to provide ideas for how to engage youth during an online coding program using experience she had herself in the classroom.”
That unique perspective benefited not just the program teams, but the entire organization.
“I think getting to work directly with young people is so valuable for us as an organization if we are humble and open enough to listen to them. We’ve already learned so much from talking directly with interns about how to run a more supportive and inclusive internship program, and they bring unique ideas and perspectives to the table,” said Ella Shahn.
“As a youth-serving organization, it is super important that we remain connected and in touch with what youth need,” said Anna Cechony. “Having three people who just graduated from high school on our staff helps the teams they are on and the team as a whole gain perspective. Especially in this time, none of us have the experience of being a student during the pandemic, and the gap year interns do. They bring a lot of knowledge to these spaces.”
Our team at foundry10 used research to create a program for youth that filled the gaps that young people are currently facing. We hope to take what we learned from this internship program and offer more opportunities for young people that are directly informed by research and the experiences of youth.
Want to hear more about equity and access in research? Connect with us at research@foundry10.org. To learn more about foundry10 and our upcoming internship opportunities, follow us on social and subscribe to our monthly Newsletter.
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