SUMMER OF POSSIBILITY

It’s hard to believe it’s already September 1st—the unofficial end of summer.

But what a beautiful journey this has been.

Mia Ramirez and Joel Deas at Above the Clouds.

What happens when the summer you planned isn't the summer you end up having?

You pivot. You get curious.

And, if you’re us (Apprentice Learning), you find another way to put young people in proximity to possibility.

This year, we made the difficult decision not to offer our traditional City Summer Internship (CSI), which has long given rising ninth-grade girls and gender-expansive youth the chance to earn money, build professional and life skills, explore workplaces, and expand their sense of what’s possible—and where they belong.

We knew that pausing CSI needed to be just that—a pause in a particular program model, not a pause in opportunity.

So this summer, we tried something different. We widened the circle, opening Workplace Explorations to middle-grade youth across our programs and giving more young people the chance to take part in experiences that had traditionally been reserved for our City Summer Internship cohort.

Lauritz, Tyquan, and Joel at GSK.

Edwin, Jelianys, and Lauritz at Above the Clouds.

Amyiah at The Food Project.

Rather than one five-week internship experience, we leaned into Workplace Explorations: a series of immersive, hands-on opportunities designed to let young people move across industries, meet the people who make those industries work, ask real questions, try real things, and begin making connections between what interests them now and what might be possible later.

And move we did.

From airplanes to kale. From strawberry DNA to pipetting robots. From drones and flight simulators to laboratories and conversations about artificial intelligence.

The workplaces changed. However, the central Apprentice Learning question did not:

Can you imagine yourself here?

Our summer began by taking that question all the way to Plymouth Municipal Airport, where our partners at Above the Clouds, Cape Cod Community College's Aviation Maintenance Program, and a remarkable group of aviation professionals introduced apprentices to a world much bigger than simply becoming a pilot.

Young people worked with metal, explored aeronautics, flew and raced drones, climbed aboard aircraft, and took turns at flight simulators. They talked with the people who keep airplanes—and the aviation industry—moving.

And then something happened that gets to the heart of why Apprentice Learning does this work.

In conversation with a career mentor, one apprentice discovered that choosing between his interest in aviation and his desire to become a first responder might be a false choice. There are careers where those two passions can meet—and suddenly, a possibility he hadn’t considered before was within reach.

That’s Workplace Exploration.

Not: What do you want to be when you grow up?

But: What do you love? What are you curious about? What haven’t you encountered yet? And what becomes possible when someone helps you connect the dots?

Juliette at Above the Clouds.

We carried those questions back to Boston and into the soil.

At The Food Project, our worksite became an urban farm near Dudley Street in Roxbury. Alongside the high-school-aged Root Crew, apprentices talked about agriculture as a human practice and a human right. They considered where the food in their communities comes from, how urban agriculture responds to food insecurity, and what growing food can teach us about building stronger, more resilient communities.

Then came the kale.

Hands got muddy. Knees got muddy. There was weeding, laughing, conversation, a little competition—and eventually a beautiful row of kale emerged from beneath the weeds.

The learning didn’t stop there. Apprentices explored vermicomposting, met the worms doing some of nature’s most important recycling work, and started to see food production differently—not simply as agriculture, but as environmental stewardship, community building, science, and a pathway to work.

Amyiah, Joel, and Serenity with the Root Crew at The Food Project.

And that's another idea at the heart of Apprentice Learning: an industry is rarely just one job.

We saw that lesson again when our summer explorations took us into Cambridge's biotechnology community.

At GSK, white coats, 3D imaging, pipettes, DNA, bacteria, robots, and—yes—“strawberry boogers” transformed biomedical science from something that happens in a textbook into something young people could touch.

Apprentices modeled proteins with clay, extracted DNA from strawberries, practiced pipetting, conducted experiments, built bacteria out of candy, and toured working laboratories. They encountered robots capable of producing hundreds of samples with incredible precision, 3D printers, gene-sequencing equipment, and laboratories where medications are examined and tested.

But the technology wasn't the most important part.

Access was.

Our apprentices could stand alongside scientists and ask: What do you actually do all day? How did you get here? How much schooling does this take? What other jobs exist here? Where might someone like me fit?

Sofia at GSK.

Rashad at GSK.

Yadian, Sofia, Mia, J'Amieson and the Apprentice Learning team at Moderna.

Those questions followed us to Moderna, where another laboratory tour quickly became another lesson in how expansive the world of work really is.

There were enormous pipetting robots, centrifuges, freezers reaching -70 degrees, 3D printers, safety equipment—and even a disco monkey decorating one scientist's workspace.

One of the messages apprentices heard there was simple and important:

Serious work doesn't mean you have to be serious all the time.

That matters.

Because Workplace Exploration isn't only about showing young people what adults do. It is about allowing them to see how people inhabit their work—how personality, curiosity, creativity, humor, values, and identity can come with you into a profession.

At Moderna, apprentices also took on a deceptively simple challenge: sort and arrange a deck of cards in 40 seconds.

They tried.

They adjusted.

They cooperated.

They tried again.

And they were reminded that “a mistake is not wasted when it teaches you something.”

The challenge became a lesson in iteration, goal setting, problem-solving, measurement, and resilience. The point wasn’t getting it right the first time.

The point was making the next attempt smarter.

That lesson could describe our summer, too.

This summer was an experiment in possibility.

Our final conversations at Moderna brought scientists together with professionals from finance and communications, giving apprentices another opportunity to see something we hope they will encounter again and again throughout their time with Apprentice Learning:

There is rarely only one door into an industry.

You can care about medicine and become a scientist.

You can care about medicine and work in communications.

You can love aviation and become a pilot.

Or a mechanic.

Or a drone operator.

Or a career that combines a love of aviation with a desire to be a first responder.

You can care deeply about your community and grow food.

You can study science, finance, technology, communications, agriculture, engineering—or discover something none of us has introduced you to yet.

Our responsibility isn’t to choose the door.

Our responsibility is to make sure young people know there are doors.

That is why Workplace Explorations matter.

Without City Summer Internship, this summer became another expression of something fundamental to Apprentice Learning’s work: exposure creates possibility, experience builds confidence, and relationships help young people imagine themselves belonging in places—and futures—they may not yet have encountered.

And young people showed us what becomes possible when access, experience, and curiosity meet.

They traveled.
They got dirty.
They put on goggles.
They flew drones.
They extracted DNA.
They asked scientists about artificial intelligence.
They climbed into airplanes.
They talked with career mentors.
They failed at things and tried again.
They asked questions. Lots of questions.

And somewhere between Roxbury and Plymouth, between a row of kale and a laboratory robot, between a flight simulator and a candy bacterium, the map of possibility—already vast, already infinite—came more fully into view. More of it became visible. More of it felt reachable. And young people could begin locating themselves within it.

That’s Apprentice Learning.

We don’t need an eighth grader to know what they want to be for the rest of their life.

We want young people to know that belonging is their birthright. They already have a place in this world, and the world of work is part of that inheritance—not something they must earn their way into, but something they have every right to explore, question, shape, and reimagine.

And that world of work is bigger, stranger, more interesting, and more full of possibility than they may have imagined.

This summer, we found a different way to keep that promise.

And we’re carrying what we learned with us into what comes next.

SAVE THE DATE!

Join us for an evening of cross generational unity, inspiration, camaraderie, and a collective commitment to sharing our communal wealth of time, talents, and treasures.

Pathways to Progress: Sharing Communal Wealth for Boston's Middle Grade Youth is a celebration of our collective achievements and an opportunity to support Apprentice Learning's ever-expanding array of career explorations and possibilities for middle-grade youth!

Come celebrate with us on Thursday, October 15 from 6–9 PM at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury for an evening of inspiration, camaraderie, and a shared commitment to nurturing communal wealth.

We’d love to see you there!