Lesson 15: Is Rafa’s unpaid internship really a job? Printable pages

Print the student pages or the educator pages for this lesson. Start with your grade band. The educator pages show every student page with sample answers and notes beside it.

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College and community

Task: Write a memo to the campus career center about unpaid internship listings on its job board, using the studio’s listing as the example. Add a one-page checklist students can use before they accept an unpaid offer.

Students make: Memo, 300–400 words, plus a one-page checklist.

One class period: 75 minutes. Full chapter: 110 minutes.

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Family page

One page to send home: a short summary of the lesson and three questions to talk about. Nobody needs to share personal stories to use it.

Family page Lesson 15: Is Rafa’s unpaid internship really a job?

In this case, a college student is offered an unpaid summer internship, and the studio says college credit makes that legal. Your student compared the offer with a federal test and wrote questions to ask before saying yes.

Questions to talk about

  1. What questions would you ask before accepting an unpaid internship?
  2. How can someone tell whether a role is mostly learning or mostly work?
  3. Who can help a student check a job or internship offer?

Download the family page, PDF, 77 KB