East Helena teacher completes Montana legislative externship program
East Helena High School teacher Trish Gillett spent three days inside Montana’s Legislative Services Division, bringing state-government lessons back to 2760 Valley Dr. and local classrooms.
Trish Gillett’s time inside Montana’s Legislative Services Division gave East Helena students a closer look at how state government shapes their daily lives. Her externship connected an East Helena High School teacher with the machinery that supports lawmakers when the Montana Legislature is not in session, a vantage point that could sharpen how policy, school funding and civics are taught back at 2760 Valley Dr.
The program is a three-day summer externship built for teachers and run through the Montana Work-Based Learning Collaborative. It is jointly developed by the Montana Manufacturing Extension Center, the Office of Public Instruction and Reach Higher Montana, and participants can earn continuing education credits plus a $600 stipend when they finish.
State education leaders say that model is meant to do more than add another line to a professional file. Reach Higher Montana says externships give educators real-world context they can bring into classrooms, while OPI describes the experience as immersive learning that strengthens teaching by connecting classroom lessons to the skills and competencies used in workplaces and careers. The program materials also estimate that one teacher can influence between 20 and 150 students each year, a reminder that even a single externship can ripple through a school system as small as East Helena Public Schools.
That local reach matters because East Helena High School is not just teaching civics in the abstract. It sits in a community where students are being prepared for life and learning close to home, and where state decisions about teacher recruitment, retention and workforce readiness can land directly in classrooms. Gillett’s experience inside the legislative branch may give her a more direct line to how those decisions are made and how they affect schools, educators and taxpayers in Lewis and Clark County.
The legislative setting also gives the externship a specific policy edge. The Legislative Services Division is the contact point for legislators when the Legislature is not in session, so the experience exposed Gillett to the year-round operations that keep state government moving between sessions. That kind of access comes as Montana expands other education workforce efforts, including the Montana Teacher Residency Program, which OPI describes as the first of its kind in the state.
For East Helena, the value of the externship is not ceremonial. It is the possibility that one teacher returns from Helena with sharper insight into how state law, school staffing and classroom practice intersect, and uses that knowledge to help students understand the government that governs them.
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