Students get their first introduction to the program on their campus tour—Director of Practicum Bridget McGivern has a wall outside her office of different opportunities students have had in the past. While the wall is full and ever-evolving, it does not encapsulate the extent of possibilities. The opportunities span much further than the examples there!

If students are interested in Practicum, they will take the initiative to meet with Bridget to discuss an opportunity. She will dive deeper into their goals and ask questions such as: What are you interested in? Why is that exciting to you? How can I help you meet that need? Oftentimes instead of discussing exact career goals, she will start with interests. “I tell them that internships develop from interests, and I can help you explore that and meet people,” Bridget explains, “and that is where an internship comes from.” One example Bridget gives is if a student has a goal of becoming a pediatric surgeon, it’s important to confirm that a student actually enjoys children, and if so, what age do they prefer? Therefore an internship at a daycare center or local preschool could be a better starting point to place those early building blocks of career exploration.

An enjoyable part of the job for Bridget is when students develop their interests over multiple years and transform their Practicum into a Signature project. One example of this is Olana Schillinger ’24, who was interested in volunteer work supporting refugee students. Olana started her practicum experience working in a classroom that served immigrant children. She dove deeper into trauma-informed teaching, psychology, and the best ways to support young children with these experiences. Olana then built off of this for her Signature project to answer the essential question: How can writing autobiographies foster an outlet for trauma and increase literacy skills with refugee students? For more information on this project, click here. 

The future of the Practicum program is bright. It’s traditionally been about taking a student’s interest and connecting them with adults or opportunities in that field, but Bridget and Experiential Learning Department Chair Jon Calos are developing that further. Group-oriented panel discussions, such as biotech industry work in partnership with RPI, and women in engineering in partnership with GE Vernova, have become very successful. Students take the responsibility to run the panel discussion and develop questions, which shows our community partners how driven students are at Emma Willard School.

Bridget’s work directly correlates with the future careers of our students. “It’s very important to know what you want to do, but it's equally important to know what you don’t want to do,” Bridget explains, “So if you try this and you love it, great, and if it ends up not being for you, that is also great.”

Students at Emma Willard School are driven by their passions, and the Practicum program has opened up a wonderful path for their curiosity to flourish.