High Tech High charter school students learn more than filing as business interns. They learn to speak technology and marketing and how to adapt to different styles of professionals.

“That is such a key skill in today’s workplace,” says Rebecca Haddock, 38, who developed the Manpower academic internship program. Students must have a mentor at their job site and a definable, relevant project or the internship would not be as valuable as it is, she says.

Haddock earned a master’s degree in educational counseling from USD and was a career counselor before joining the high school she describes as a “new way to do school.” She has taken on a new role in fund-raising. “I don’t have an MBA in fund-raising but it’s just like I tell our students when they ask, ‘Rebecca, why do you do this?’” Haddock says. “How many times have we asked you to do things that you’ve never done?”

Haddock and her son Ezra, 6, make community service a habit of their daily lives — one based on an opportunity to brighten someone’s day. Her message to Ezra, who has saved toys for orphans and drawn pictures for prison inmates, is simple: “We have an opportunity to do cool things for somebody else just like other people do cool things for us.”

A single mom, Haddock is studying flamenco culture and music and takes her son along to the lessons, which have inspired them both to learn Spanish. Haddock says she hopes Ezra will benefit from seeing his mom jump into an interest that she previously knew nothing about. “Maybe someday I will actually dance,” says Haddock, who is drawn to the “strength and intention” of the dance developed by Spanish gypsies.