Teacher Externships: Building a Bridge Between Community and GISD

Aug 4

For six years, Georgetown ISD (GISD) and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce have partnered up to place GISD secondary teachers in externship programs with local businesses. The goal of the program is to provide teachers with opportunities to expand their knowledge in different fields in order to enrich the classroom experience for students and support their own personal growth.

This year, GISD and The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce placed a record number of 17 teachers in the externship program, which is four more than last year’s number. The program runs through the summer, and each participating teacher spends three days with their assigned business or organization. We visited three of the externships over the summer for an inside look…

The Caring Place

Señora Maria Vélez Montes, Spanish teacher at Georgetown High School (GHS), found an emotional connection during her externship with The Caring Place.

“From the beginning of this experience, I have been touched by The Caring Place,” Vélez Montes said. “I am a big advocate for community outreach, and I have learned a lot about working and volunteering in Georgetown during my time here.”

Over the few days Vélez Montes spent at The Caring Place, she toured and worked in the food pantry, the programs and services desk, and The Shops at The Caring Place.

“Our goal is to give Maria an overview of the whole place,” Rita Turner, Community Engagement Manager at The Caring Place said. “We want her to have the necessary resources so that if a student is in crisis, she can tell them exactly how we can help.”

Not only does Vélez Montes plan to take her knowledge back to help students, but she also hopes to educate students on how they can help others.

“Most of my students don’t have work experience, but volunteering is a great place to start,” Vélez Montes said. “Sharing all of these opportunities with a classroom where you have many different socioeconomic backgrounds hopefully ties our students together.”

In one of Vélez Montes’ classes, Spanish III, a lot of the curriculum focuses on future careers and volunteering/service opportunities. On the other hand, as a Spanish honor society sponsor, she works with students that are always looking to get involved in the community.

“I am excited to take back what I learn from this externship to build lessons and spread the word about The Caring Place’s role in our community.”

Wag Heaven

During her externship at Wag Heaven, East View High School (EVHS) English teacher Georganne Upchurch’s learning experience expanded far beyond pet care.

“Georganne wanted to learn more about our marketing strategies and the basics of running a business,” Wag Heaven co-owner Jusak Yang Bernhard said. “I was quite excited about the opportunity to have Georganne here and see where she can help us in different areas.”

One project Upchurch worked on was writing up her first press release for Pet Partners, an organization that promotes the health and wellness benefits of animal-assisted therapy, activities, and education, being named top fundraiser in the country.

Bernhard and his Wag Heaven co-owner and partner Jeff Manley both have backgrounds in entertainment and marketing, so they were no strangers to providing guidance on building a press release from scratch.

“I went back and read press releases that Jusak and Jeff have written before, and I am so impressed,” Upchurch said. “My minor is in marketing, and Jeff and Jusak have provided great guidance in my marketing tasks here.”

Aside from the marketing knowledge Upchurch gained during her short time at Wag Heaven, she walked away with a strong sense of community engagement.

“I think the biggest benefit of the externship program is the connections we make with the community,” Upchurch said. “As a teacher, you start to think about the students and where they will go when they graduate...you want them to know that their community is here for them, and we are all tied together.”

“With a program like this, the most important thing is that teachers can go back and show students how local businesses make a difference, how they take ownership, and how they work in the community,” Manley said.

Upchurch learned the importance of great customer service as she took note of all the regular customers Wag Heaven has accumulated due to the way they run their business.

“We are a store with a heart and we like to do a lot of work for our community,” Bernhard said. “I have to commend Georganne and the teachers involved in this program for getting out and spending time with our local businesses and organizations.”

Community Impact

Brady McBride, art and mathematics teacher at Richarte High School, entered his externship at Community Impact with the hope of bringing back a new way to teach in the classroom.

“I had originally hoped to be paired with Community Impact, and it had to do a lot with the knowledge I was after: the visuals, the projects, the news stories and the way they take in breaking stories,” McBride said.” It mimics a lot of what I want to do in the classroom, which is to show my students how to take information and be able to synthesize it.”

As both an art and math teacher, McBride is always looking for unique ways to energize and change up the lessons in both subject matters for his students.

“One of the reasons I'm a teacher is because I come across too many people that have convinced themselves they are not good at something, and that conversation will come up frequently in both art and math,” McBride said. “During my experience at Community Impact, I want to learn how the employees in this organization approach their work and challenges.”

One of the greatest outcomes of the externship program is the lessons or projects that teachers build into their curriculum based on their experiences with their assigned organization. As McBride studied the structure, story-telling processes, and data collection at Community Impact, his wheels started to spin as he looked onto the coming school year.

“I want to create a specific type of project for my students that has guidelines and a prompt that mimics the process of creating a story here at Community Impact,” McBride said. “When the student engages in the process, I want to be able to help them overcome the hurdles that are intentionally going to be there.”

“In order to help my students, I have to learn from these professionals and study how they handle any given situation,” McBride said.

Whether teachers apply for this program to learn about community resources, connect with other professionals, learn a new skill or two, or find inspiration for classroom learning, the GISD teacher externship program is filled with opportunities for our educators. Not only do our teachers benefit from this engagement, but our local businesses and organizations do, too.

To learn more about this year's program and view a full list of participating organizations, visit our website.