The New Apprentices

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Fernando Montaque did not expect to become so engrossed in his internship that he felt responsible even on days off. This past spring, the lanky, 19-year-old senior at Urban Assembly Academy of History and Citizenship for Young Men in the Bronx spent more than 70 hours after school training to become a soccer coach to younger kids.

The Asphalt Green sports center on Manhattan's Upper East Side then hired Fernando to intern at its summer camp through a TASC initiative called the After-School Apprenticeship Program. Fernando worked Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he wondered how his supervisors could get along without him.

"How are they handling those kids alone?" he said. "Because, you know, when you're coaching 20 little kids, there's at least one who's not listening. I don't blast out yelling at them. I get down on their level, and I'm pretty good at getting those little kids back in the game."

The notion of adolescents becoming apprentices is as old as the notion of skilled work. What's changed across the country is that more organizations are developing teen training and apprenticeship programs that engage the most vulnerable high school students in work that excites them, puts them in touch with career masters, and helps them envision that kind of mastery in their own futures.

Though it's small, the proportion of public after-school funding devoted to high school students is growing. The growth in apprenticeship programs also is fueled by leaders in all sectors – corporate, foundation, nonprofit – seeking solutions to the drop-out crisis. The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, the MetLife Foundation and the Pinkerton Foundation all support TASC programs that train high school students to work with younger kids in after-school programs and summer camps.

After-school and youth organizations have listened to what high school kids say they want out of programs: tangible rewards such as credits or paid work, and the chance to build real world skills. "Teens have told us over and over that they're concerned about being skilled enough to enter the workforce," said David Sinski, executive director of the After School Matters apprenticeship program in Chicago. "They want to develop concrete, hard skills...They want to be able to see how far they've come, and to talk about their work using the language of that profession."

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Fernando came to Asphalt Green through TASC's After-School Apprenticeship Program.

Strong apprenticeship programs go well beyond job placement. Kids typically undergo intensive training not only in the skills they need to do their jobs, but in general life skills: be responsible, be on time, and communicate when there's a problem. They bond with peer apprentices from other schools, making friends with similarly committed kids. And they form strong relationships with adults, many of them youth development professionals who can help kids through challenges at school and at home.

Two examples of such programs are A World Fit for Kids in Los Angeles, and the YMCA Youth Institute in Long Beach, California.

The Youth Institute teaches digital media skills to 8th and 9th graders through summer institutes that award them $500 stipends. Throughout high school, students can do one-month paid projects teaching those skills to younger students. They also stay connected through graduation with Youth Institute counselors and their friends from media training.

A World Fit for Kids trains high school students to get internships leading younger kids in fitness activities. High school students get more than 30 hours of initial training. They then have to do at least 24 hours of service work in parks and school playgrounds, for which they receive stipends. Work schedules are tied to their grade point averages; the better their grades, the more they can work.

One of the nation's largest and most demonstrably successful apprenticeship programs is After School Matters, which has led kids from Chicago's toughest neighborhoods through 22,500 apprenticeship projects. Students apprentice with masters in fields such as photography, technology and sports, then are hired as paid interns. Researchers found these students had higher school attendance and graduation rates than peers who were not in the program. The more intensively students participated – pursuing multiple cycles of training and internships – the more likely they were to graduate.

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Carolyn Corredor is barely older than some of the middle school campers she manages at the Center for Family Life. Her supervisor offers advice.

TASC adapted this model for the second summer in New York, operating the After-School Apprenticeship Program for Fernando and 139 other students. Two partner organizations in the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems expanded the project to Boston and Providence.

In New York, kids interned as lifeguards for Henry Street Settlement. Others worked in soccer and playwriting camps. One group taught art to campers through Studio in a School. "They took seriously being teachers," said Tom Cahill, president and CEO of Studio in a School. "That meant they had to learn presentation skills, give positive feedback to kids, write up their lessons and present them orally." They also worked with a master artist at the Queens Museum of Art as she created a mural homage to Colin Powell for the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica. "All of it was a great example of the kind of youth development experiences you want high school students to have," Mr. Cahill said.

Danny Perez, a senior at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, is a veteran of two programs. He's participated in City Connection and the TASC-New York Times Summer Jobs Program, where his training in managing kids has helped him manage everyone else in his life, Danny said. He is a musician. This summer he led songwriting classes and other activities with middle school students at a performing arts camp run by the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park.

His mother, Jessica Perez, said she could see her son grow before her eyes. "Kids from the program come up to him on the street and something happens to him. He's not much older than they are, but he's engaging with them like an adult – how's school, what are you up to?" Ms. Perez said, "I'm a single mother who's raised him without a father for a lot of years. I love seeing him with these kids. He gives them everything he has, and everything he didn't have."

Danny himself says he's more directed than friends and classmates who have never been trained or challenged to do a demanding job. His government teacher asked his classmates to share their career goals at the start of senior year. Danny was one of three students who raised a hand. He wants to be a music teacher, then get his master's degree and become a principal or have a music school. "I'm not walking into the forest without a direction," he said.

In his new book, "The Means to Grow Up: Reinventing Apprenticeships as a Means of Developmental Support in Adolescence," Robert Halpern of the Erikson Institute describes what he's seen among high school apprentices. They "begin to think more flexibly and approach tasks more carefully," he writes. "They learn that problems or difficulties in a project are not a sign to quit but something to work through. They come to take more responsibility for themselves – their words, bodies, ideas and reactions…They come to give more of themselves gradually to the projects they were working on.

"They begin to think more about what they need to do – in the present and the future."