Amazon Internships and Other Summer Opportunities for Teens

 From SPS:

The Amazon Career Launch206 Program is an immersive 2-week hybrid (virtual and in-person) summer program aimed at inspiring High School students to pursue technology careers of the future, prioritizing underserved and underrepresented communities. Students earn .5 CTE credit and receive a stipend.

This program is only for SPS students and the deadline is June 17th.

SPS also has a list of other internship opportunities that look very good.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I’m so disappointed, first I’m hearing of this: the deadline to apply was June 1

https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/cte/career-connected-learning/launch206/

I always feel like there’s this under class of us plebeians who never get to hear about any of these opportunities. And it doesn’t *necessarily* track with race or income, there are just some who are privileged by their access to networks and being in the know

A couple of months back I was on a community zoom call at our high school, and students of African American heritage we’re talking about how they felt they didn’t get access to certain things, like they’d hear that certain teachers were talking to certain students encouraging them to apply for certain things, or that they were asking the students when they could support them with letters of reference, etc. I was bewildered at this. I can attest that neither of our kids who are straight a students have ever been approached by any teacher ever to ask how they could be supported by the teacher.

That Amazon internship would’ve been EXTREMELY fabulous for our teen, who’s thinking of computer science but is very intimidated by the heavy physics/calculus, but understands beyond that course work there’s solving logic problems and exciting teamwork.

Thank you Melissa though for always doing so much good work.

Blue bus
6/2/22, 11:04 AM
Melissa Westbrook said…
Blue Bus, I don't know anything about the link you provided; odd that it wasn't sent to me as the others were.

Tell your kid to apply for the Amazon one; never hurts to try.

I do agree about being in the know. The district should be making huge posters for every high school to announce these opportunities or putting it on Instagram. I think I only found out from a mention of the Amazon internships in an article.

I also agree that none of my kids' teachers ever asked how the teacher could support them. I think it might feel like that to some kids but it's probably parents saying to their kid, "Ask your teacher about XYZ."

Again, it's on the district and the schools to change this. Most parents have zero time to be detectives.
6/2/22, 1:51 PM
Anonymous said…
Agree with Blue Bus. I have been looking since February for summer activities and these never landed on my radar. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Doh
6/2/22, 4:39 PM
Unknown said…
We can hope increased state support for counselors will result in more communication about these type of opportunities. In some districts, much of the communication is supposed to take place through Advisory time, not necessarily from classroom teachers during a class.
6/2/22, 8:16 PM
Zella917 said…
The counseling newsletter is an afterthought attached as a PDF to the weekly high school bulletin at Ingraham. So it’s inconvenient to view and hard to read. I do make an effort to read it, but I’m not sure everyone does. If we want our high school kids to know about these opportunities, the information should be more easily accessible. (And I still don’t think I read about this Amazon internship).
6/4/22, 11:53 AM
Melissa Westbrook said…
I only learned about this from reading a report to the Board at one of their committee meetings. I think there are very, very few people who read committee minutes. I feel sad that the district can't do better on this kind of thing.
6/4/22, 3:18 PM
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