The apprentice or intern gives labor in exchange for the chance to learn about a certain kind of work. The labor itself may seem repetitive or boring to someone experienced in the field, but should be interesting and challenging to the newcomer. By the same token, the "master" or supervisor should not have to take a lot of time to stop and explain how to do things, because the apprentice will learn mainly by watching and doing . Sometimes the apprentice or intern is also paid in money. Sometimes the apprentice or intern pays. Often, no money is exchanged.

What's the difference between internships and apprenticeships?

Internships often involve office or administrative work, while apprenticeships usually focus on learning specific skills in a craft or trade. But many people use the terms interchangeably.

Apprenticeships can take place in any field, from chemistry research to interior decorating. They’ve been around for millennia, though in recent decades they’ve been somewhat forgotten in the U.S. or at least restricted to certain trades. But homeschoolers have rediscovered them as a superb learning arrangement, and more recently, some schoolpeople have even started to set up apprenticeships for school students.

In some countries, apprenticeships have always been the way that people learned certain types of work, but these fields are often stigmatized as the fate of people not brainy enough to become doctors or ambassadors or such. I’m excited that unschoolers are reinventing apprenticeships for their own purposes ¾ not only completing long-term apprenticeships to become electricians or midwives, but also arranging short or long term situations that may have nothing to do with their career goals or that involve an academic field rather than a "trade." Unschoolers apprentice themselves for a week or five years, to chemists and museum creators and windmill repairpeople and poets. So, if you live in an area where people define apprenticeships or internships imaginatively, don’t let them limit you ¾ dream up the best situation for you and for a skilled adult you admire, and then explain you dream and suggest a trial period.

Organizations that offer internships

Thousands of organizations offer positions in fields including communications, arts, human services, public affairs, science and industry. You might work on costume and scene construction with a ballet company, conduct a research project for the Peace Corps, do camera work or lighting for TV stations, write and conduct surveys for a newspaper, or do office work for a publisher. Some internships offer stipends. Many provide room and board, free classes, college credit, and help with finding employment. If you want to apply for a particular position, do keep this in mind:

• Some programs are rather rigid, others are flexible enough that you can adapt them to fit your particular interests
• Some internships are in high demand, and difficult to get. You will compete for them with other people, most older than you.
• Many internships will be officially off-limits until you are eighteen or so, though others are open to high school and even middle school age people. Furthermore, almost all organizations are open to ‘independent" inquiries. In other words, they will consider ignoring normal requirements, creating special positions for people who wouldn’t fit into their usual slots. And anyway, persevering unschoolers often find that age requirements are not written in stone

Check with businesses, non-profits, and other organizations near you, or go to the library for a reference book such as Internships: on-the-job training opportunities for college students and adults, America’s Top Internships, Peterson’s Internships, or Student Advantage Guide: The Internship Bible.

If you use one of these reference books, remember that the less famous organizations will be easier to break into. A small toen newspaper, for instance, won’t have as many applications as The Washington Post.

Your library may also have specialized internship guides, like Ronald W. Fry’s Internships: The Travel and Hospitality Industries, or the National Directory of Arts Internships, or the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta’s Internship Directory, which lists over five hundred summer jobs and internships at botanical gardens and other horticultural institutions.

How you can arrange and design you own apprenticeship or internship

You may need perseverance, but all you really have to do is decide what kind of a position you want, and then talk to everyone in your area who works in that field until you find someone who like you will take you on for at least a trial period.

A very helpful book is The Question is College, by Herbert Kohl. It discusses apprenticeships as an alternative to college, but is relevant for people of any age.

Of course, you can approach strangers too. After all, apprenticeships and internships help everyone involved. You learn by watching people, who know what they are doing and by actually doing many of the same things they do. They get free or inexpensive help, as well as the joy and pride that comes from sharing what they love with an excited newcomer. Chances are, if you phone all the dog trainers in the yellow pages, at least one will let you try a one-day experiment, and that may lead into a week-long volunteer job, and then a three-month apprenticeship. Don’t give up after one "no-thank-you."

Be sure to talk about your ideas and goals thoroughly enough that both parties have similar experiences. Write them down. I you envision three hours on weekday mornings of laying out newspaper copy, but Mr. Mendoza sees you sweeping floors and running errands, it won’t work. Discover that before you commit yourself.

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Comments:

Just loved your book
From: Lindsay
Hi my name is Lindsay Abell and I have recently become interested in "unschooling". I have always been extremely skeptical of homeschooling, but that all changed the other day when I found your book, The Teenage Liberation Handbook, while working on a research paper in a bookstore. For about 6 months now, I have found myself becoming extremely passionate about trying to change our school system. I have always been a very passionate, driven, determined, intelligent person, but if you were to look at my grades from the past two years since I have gotten into high school. It is frustrating for me because I know if we were graded on how much we actually knew I would have an awesome grade. Because of this, my parents have been extremely worried and, though they won't admit it, disappointed in me. My research paper is on out school system and the learning environment we are pushed into so when I found your book on the shelf the title caught my eye. I was hoping to get a few bits of information from it with no intention to read it cover to cover. Well that's what I did. I sat down at my table and opened it up and read thew entire thing as I sat there. Everything you were saying made so much sense to me. So I bought the book and when I got home I casually mentioned your book and my said "So I guess you want to be homeschooled now" though it was obvious she was kidding.

And I replied "Yeah I think so." She was very understanding and agreed to read your book before passing judgement. She fell in love with the book. She agreed with everything you said, though she was still hesitant of letting me do this. ....But I realized learning is more important than any of that. I thrive on learning. I love reading, writing, even doing research papers and to think that I am being given the chance to learn in a way that suits me is incredible. Thank you so much for everything. You truly have changed my outlook and my life. I appreciate that more than you could ever know.
Lindsay
Odessa, Florida

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