Help a Teacher Help his Students

Please help! I need businesses that are willing to let me bring a small group of students to visit, that are willing to let one or two students observe a worker during part of the day, or who are willing to take on a student as an unpaid intern and provide them with vocational training for a few months.
To give you some background, I am Mike Jarosinski, the Occupational Preparation teacher at Wallace-Rose Hill High School. My duties involve working with a group of Exceptional Children who, while not anticipated to go on to obtain a college degree, are nonetheless capable of holding a regular job and having a successful career. To make the program work, however, I need to expose them to a variety of jobs and to give them experience with the ones that interest them. In most cases, I am not asking for help immediately.
Places that we can visit for an hour or so and individuals who willing to come to school and talk about their career are what I need in the short term. As the program continues, I will still need this help, but I will need to move individual students into longer placements ranging from a few weeks to a few months where they can better see if that is the job for them and hopefully gain some skills and experience. Ultimately, all of these individuals will need paid employment to finish the program, but there is no obligation on anyone’s part to give them a job.
For the observation and internship part of my program, I am not talking about volunteers. To keep both of us out of trouble, the programs to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act. In brief, the FLSA says that the students cannot be “free labor”. They cannot replace a regular worker, nor can they perform duties that would keep the employer from hiring another worker. While they can work while interning, it is expected that they would do only parts of a worker’s job and would require supervision and training. In effect, the amount of benefit a business receives should be roughly equal to the training and supervision provided.
For those businesses willing to provide training, I have a standard agreement form to set down in writing the duties of both sides. While this is a formal requirement to avoid legal difficulties down the road, I hope it will not prevent anyone from helping because the net effect of this program will be more productive citizens and workers in Wallace and fewer needing public assistance.
Contact Information:
Wallace-Rose Hill H.S.—285-7501
Email: mjarosinski@duplinschools.net
Cell: 910-409-7078