JEFFERSON COUNTY, W.Va. (WDVM) — Students at Washington High School are getting some real-world experience through a new program run by the Education Alliance’s West Virginia Ready Internship program.

The new program is being run through a leadership class at Washington High School.

“It was just developed for our school leaders for maybe our leaders of our sports teams or really anyone who is just interested in learning more about leadership becoming a better leader,” said Katlin Grantham, who works as a leadership teacher at Washington High School.

Under the program, students worked with employees from West Virginia American Water all semester long. They did virtual mentor calls and worked on a capstone project simulating real-world situations with installing water lines.

“We were all assigned a property in West Virginia and we had to come up… with three different types of responses to fix the problem, which were either install a well, have American Water install the line themselves or have the homeowner install the line,” said Zander Lamp, a junior at Washington High School.

The goal of the program is to make sure students are career-ready and have the chance to explore different careers before heading out into the real world.