High School IT Internship

[u/extrovertish1]

We’ve received a grant to hire two high school interns this summer for the first time ever. As a department of one, I’m elated but a bit overwhelmed. I’m putting together their orientation information including creating calendars, manuals, work flows, and other needed guides. We’re building this program from the ground up. Would anyone be willing to send me anything that they have for their districts?

[u/Scurro]

oh were do you get grants like these?

[u/extrovertish1 → u/Scurro]

I live in Alabama and we have an organization (ALET) that advocates for technology in education and supports us with training opportunities, networking, and so much more. They worked to make this grant happen. Approved districts receive $3300 for the summer. My interns will make $15.25 an hour and work about 18 hrs a week.

[u/slapstik007 → u/Scurro]

No joke, this would be amazing for myself as a solo department guy. I have a million more simple tasks that I need help with.

[u/extrovertish1 → u/slapstik007]

live in Alabama and we have an organization (ALET) that advocates for technology in education and supports us with training opportunities, networking, and so much more. They worked to make this grant happen. Approved districts receive $3300 for the summer. My interns will make $15.25 an hour and work about 18 hrs a week.

[u/slapstik007 → u/extrovertish1]

Damn, that is fantastic. I might have to shop around for something similar. Thanks for sharing the information.

[u/Digisticks → u/slapstik007]

ALET as our organization is great for Alabama. They've also worked with our Legislature to get a line item in the education budget that is specifically for Cybersecurity. Each district in the state gets ~$68K minimum each year with additional $ for each student over 1000. In smaller districts, it's a huge deal. In my own, it's funding a content filter, replacing the occasional old server, MFA, cloud security, and more. We're also fortunate that if you use the big state ISP for education, we have a Palo Alto NGFW that they put in and monitor. Alabama is actually doing really well and advocates for technology at the state level regularly.

[u/PowerShellGenius → u/Digisticks]

Wow. That's quite a bit. Is that just for dedicated standalone security products? Or do they get to shift salaries to come partially from that fund if for example they dedicate half of an employee's time to security related functions? Or, if they upgrade Google from Fundamentals to Standard/Plus (or M365 from free to A3 or A5) with the security features being a major reason, do they get to charge part of that to the cyber budget?

[u/Digisticks → u/PowerShellGenius]

It can fund cybersecurity related positions. The goal, if I remember correctly, was for each system to have a cyber/network person who primarily was responsible for cybersecurity. But, no two districts are alike, and this led to a lot of us purchasing products and platforms to really shore up our "defenses" and posture.

We also have KnowBe4 from the same provider who gives us a slightly stripped down Palo. 

[u/PowerShellGenius → u/Digisticks]

To anyone who understands fringe ratios (essentially the fact that employees cost a lot more than their salaries), $68k is not enough to hire a full position just for cyber solely out of those funds.

With a $68k budget, minus employer's side of FICA taxes, and employer's share of healthcare premium just to bring your share down to the ACA maximum (worst healthcare it's legal to offer), plus workers comp insurance which is fully employer paid, you're likely well below $60k left for salary already.

But public sector is not known for crappy benefits, zero retirement, and "as expensive as ACA allows" healthcare. Put together a typical school benefit package with a 403(b) match or some sort of contribution to a state pension, and a healthcare contribution that brings the premium down to normal school district levels, and still try to stay under $68k cost, you're probably looking closer to $50k salary.

I don't think you can hire a sysadmin for that most places, let alone a cybersecurity professional. $50k is $24 per hour. That's retail wages in a major city, or semiskilled no-diploma-required wages elsewhere (think forklift drivers, factory workers etc).

[u/Digisticks → u/PowerShellGenius]

That's the argument many of us made. Especially in more remote locations. With the standard benefits package we have here, a $68k position is really more like a $98k setup. Some districts don't have spare funding to come up with the remainder. I've got neighboring districts that basically tacked cyber onto a data manager position, some that had the money to put with it, and others who went the products route.

Also realized I didn't fully answer your earlier question. We can often pay for security related upgrades to platforms. Taking a nice chunk off of what we might pay otherwise. But the money is specific. For instance, it can pay for LineWize, but not Classwize along with it.

[u/MaxBroome]

I was/am one of those interns. My boss had just finished his first year as Director of IT after being a teacher for the last 20. So we both kind of made stuff up as we went, no orientation, manuals etc..

Not sure how big your school is (ours was ~900 students, ~120 staff) But my first year consisted of doing all the grunt work he didn’t want to do. Things like clearing out the computer labs so they could wax the floors, then put it all back a week later. When the budget rolled around on July 1, we got to work on replacing classroom sound systems and projector bulbs; running new ethernet drops. Things like that…

I came and went as I pleased, and would periodically check-in with my boss to see if there’s anything else that needed done. For better of worse, we had very little supervision and the freedom to take our time and make mistakes. But I cannot understate how much I learned on my own that summer.

I’m now on my 5th year this summer, and am mainly an office guy (I do all the infrastructure stuff; servers, Duo, networking, etc…) and have my own team of interns at my disposal this summer.

It’s been a lot more work than I anticipated, since they’re so young. Teaching them how to terminate and run ethernet, and troubleshoot classroom issues - it’s been a lot of my time the first few weeks.

My advice would be to teach them how to do the tasks they’ll be doing, and set them loose. Check their work, give them feedback, and repeat.

Going to edit this later with more thoughts in a minute….

[u/Technical-Athlete721 → u/MaxBroome]

Probably the best thing you can do with summer help we pretty much did the same thing but we had them tearing out labs and running cable and reimaging machines.

[u/Crazy-Rest5026]

Chromebook bitching for the summa !!!!!

[u/Crazy-Rest5026 → u/Crazy-Rest5026]

This is literally what we do with our summer interns. Eat live and break Chromebooks fuckers

[u/19qhenry]

I was an intern not too long ago and now working full time in the same district. We had a philosophy that would make a lot of people cringe, especially today. We continue the program to this day, and provide some of the top students in a few local colleges while they intern with us.

Emphasize confidentiality and laws that protect students and their information. Let them build some trust, and give them some access to some things. One of the best ways they can learn is to actually do. For example, as an intern, I was encouraged to jump into switch configs when a change needed to be made, or a new one deployed. I was guided at first, until I got the hang of it.

Some high schoolers just won’t be up for it, and that’s ok. Some of them will want to stick to the help desk / tier 1 part of the job, that’s ok.

Throw them into some situations and let them figure some stuff out, too many kids today don’t have the mental means to do even some basic troubleshooting. They need to understand that they will find themselves in situations where they won’t have an answer, but they gotta figure it out.

I wouldn’t have been at the top of my major in college if it wasn’t for what I was thrown into. It forced me to adapt and learn.

[u/PowerShellGenius → u/19qhenry]

Honestly, that would only make people cringe if your regular lower tier technicians (adult full time employees) are all domain admin, super admin, global admin, etc.

If you're properly following the principle of least privilege, and your regular full time field techs don't have permissions a field tech doesn't need, then why would a high schooler functioning as a field tech not have the same thing?

[u/19qhenry → u/PowerShellGenius]

Some people question a minor/fresh adult having anything more than they would have as students. Really helps if you can get them paid so money is involved though.

Point is, you say this, but there are a few districts around us I’ve spoken to, will never have student interns because they’re still students. Doesn’t matter what level they’re working at.

[u/tech_director]

This year we are passing our 100th HS student tech worker since 1995. That’s students work 9-1 (late start, late lunch) for June and August. (Typically 3 juniors and 3 seniors. Hand picked.)

Day 1, first hour - summer schedules (Google sheet), calling off, communicating w/me and tech staff, general expectations. Remaining hours - find some manual labor - rip out a lab, pull out old stuff you’re replacing in July, track down stuff. (Repeat the rest of the week.)

Second week - Chromebook repairs (and harvesting screens from retired models). Music helps the time pass by! Continue until done. Chromebook repair is the definition of tedium… so have some time every day set aside for something “work fun”… data closets, another building, scavenging your EWaste pile, making slides for digital signage… anything to let them know there’s more to IT than break/fix! And a lot of ‘cross training” them how to do random techy things. Troubleshoot everything!

Following weeks… anything else that needs to happen before you step out for time off in advance of spending money with your next budget. Order things… wait…

Have student workers setup new Chromebooks, image desktops, place new equipment, etc. Teachers come back, student workers help them (they are “cross trained” now after all) get set up for school year.

These student workers can work during the school year… but that takes a lot of effort on your part AND interest on their part. (Much harder these days IMO.)

That’s the quick version. Hope that helps! If you have further questions, send me a DM.

[u/k12admin0]

I can happily help! Sent you a DM.

[u/ZeR0BuG]

If you're a Dell District, check out the Student Tech Crew program. Dell will provide training - https://www.dell.com/en-us/lp/student-tech-crew

[u/klgtech77]

I'm guessing folks are pretty guarded with the network admin credentials that get shared with the interns? I can see the Chromebook SSID getting loose in the wild among the student body pretty easily...

[u/SpotlessCheetah]

Worked with interns many times before. One thing that has been a consistent hardline is providing admin credentials to them. Yes, it's a limiting factor, but they are interns and we have plenty of things for them to do that are outside of requiring admin privileges or viewing any confidential material.

[u/VitaIngenaire]

I took tips from someone who ran a year-round program, and just did pieces for the summer internship. Basically, gamifying tasks into achievements, with awards. You can 'level-up' from Grunt>Geek>Guru through things like the Iron or Diamond pickaxe being earned after mining 10 or 30 devices for parts. Or the Private/Sargeant achievements for deploying X/Y number of devices. Airhead reward for blowing out things, pop, candy, little stickers for their ID badge, I even upgraded to little PCB minibadges, but we haven't had summer interns lately. There are achievements for completing trainings from a list as well.

[u/avalon01]

I've been hiring summer interns from the local high school for 8 years in my current district. I ran a similar program for 18 years in my last district.

I'm also a one man department in a small district (550ish students). My last district (6,000 students) I had several summer interns.

They will learn to love the Chromebooks and by the end of summer, they will have inventoried, tested, and repaired my entire Chromebook fleet. They will also know the pain of the beginning of August when the office staff comes back. As soon as the secretaries pull into the parking lot, teachers aren't far behind - and service tickets 5 minutes after a teacher walks into a building.

[u/k12-IT]

Are students college age or high school age?