1. What new appreciations did you develop while working as an intern? Why?
Working as an intern in a school has given me so much more appreciation for teachers and all of the work that they put into making a school day run smoothly. Students don't typically realize all of the work teachers do for school each day; they have to design lesson plans/activities and prepare all of the necessary materials for those activities. Working with preschoolers, the teacher needs to have double the activities planned because three year olds have about a three second attention span and without an activity they will run around like chickens with their heads cut off. More specifically, my internship has made me more appreciative of what I would call my "basic necessities". Basic necessities to me includes food, water, a toothbrush, a roof over my head, a bed, a shower, and clean clothes. I am a million times more appreciative of these things now after working with kids who don't have these "basic necessities". I am also more appreciative of my supportive family and friends; many of these kids are coming from low-income indigenous families who can't support them financially and/or emotionally. So I am incredibly grateful to have good support systems from various places. 2. What qualities or characteristics did you see in the people around you that you want to develop in yourself? One quality I noticed that the head coordinator possesses is the ability to command respect when he walks into a room. In the mornings when he walks into the cafeteria while all of the kids are eating breakfast, it is obvious that he is in control. I think he has this quality because he is a good leader. I know he is a good leader because of the tight knit staff he has created to run the school. I consider myself a natural leader, but I would love to develop that highest sense of leadership - where I can walk into a room and people automatically have respect for me. Another quality that the teachers posses is the ability to be positive all the time. While I am clearly exhausted by the end of the day, the teachers at the school continue to have smiles on their faces and as much energy as they did in the beginning of the day. I strive to be as positive and happy as the teacher who had to strip all of the clothes off of one of the kids, rinse him off in the little shower in the bathroom, and run to get him new clothes - all with a smile on her face. She wasn't annoyed or angry that this kid had soiled all of his clothes and needed to be washed, but she was comforting and positive. I want to develop this immense sense of positivity because it will help me to deal with stressful situations without being stressed and/or making other people stressed. 3. How did your view of life beyond high school change or develop during your time as an intern? After working in a professional environment, I realized how truly important it is to go into a career you utterly enjoy. The career needs to be one that makes you excited to wake up early and go to work. If you don't fully enjoy your work, you will not only be unhappy, but also everyone working around you will feel your negative energy and their moods will go down as well. 4. How might internship influence the direction of your life? After working in my internship, I am definitely leaning towards going into a career where I can help kids. This internship has shown me that I really enjoy working with kids; I love their energy and positive attitudes. Even though I love watching kids learn and grow in a classroom setting, I don't see myself becoming a teacher. I know in the future I want to have a flexible schedule - which is something teachers don't have. I also don't have much interest in commanding a classroom full of twenty students all by myself. On top of this, I learned that I would prefer my work to "stay at work"; being a teacher, I would need to constantly be thinking of ideas to do with my students and buying and preparing those activities. All on my own time. I don't want to do that. But I am definitely open to a different form of teaching - I am looking into the speech therapy career, I think it would be enjoyable for me to do speech therapy with preschool age kids. 5. How did communication and/or collaboration at work influence your understanding of professional working environments? There was a lack of communication at my workplace for sure. For instance, I was told I had to create my main project (The Rincon de Salud) by the Wednesday of that week because the doctor was coming that day. I finished by the end of the day on Tuesday and was excited to see the doctor work in his or her new space. Wednesday came, and the doctor didn't show up. When I asked where the doctor was all of the teachers basically responded with "We don't know. We never know when he or she is coming." Just one example of the lack of communication between the doctor and the teachers, and ultimately me - I could have had more time to work on my project if I had known the doctor would not be coming until later in the month. As for collaboration, it was obvious that the teachers are all friends; they were incredibly kind and helpful to one another. During nap time on my first day of work, all of the teachers instantly gathered into the recreation room and started moving all of the furniture around and throwing away trash and supplies they no longer needed. My mom and I were incredibly confused about what they were doing but they all worked so well together and listened to each other's opinions. This interaction showed the value of having tight knit coworkers. 1. How did you make a meaningful contribution to your work place?
I think I made several meaningful contributions to my work place; both material and emotional. Material wise, I created the "Doctor's Office" that the school desperately needed for when the doctor visits every month. The teachers and coordinator were so grateful, and I know they will use that space for a very long time. But I also gave an emotional contribution to the children I was working with. The children in my class are low-income, indigenous kids who need support. I offered my utmost kindness and compassion towards them, and gave them someone to say "hola" to over and over again when I walk into class every morning. 2. How was your work as an intern meaningful to your education? Being a teacher at my internship has given me an entirely new perspective to view school with. I feel that I will return to school as a better student since I have now experienced the other side of a classroom. I will return with more patience towards my peers and teachers, as well as more gratitude for my teachers. 3. How was your work significant or meaningful for you beyond school and your specific internship site? The work that I have done at internship has been incredibly meaningful for me because I know that I am making a difference in the lives of the kids I am working with. Like I said before, most of these kids are coming from families that offer them little support and guidance, and I feel like I have helped guide them at least a little bit during these past few weeks. When I got to the school, I noticed the kids were incredibly mean to each other (as kids are in any preschool). But when a kid would hit another kid, the teachers would yell the offenders name as their form of discipline. However, when I saw a kid hurting another kid I would touch their shoulder/arm and say "simpatico" aka "nice". Typically the offender would stop, but sometimes they would continue and as soon as the victim would cry I would talk to the offender and ask them about their behavior - why they did what they did. I wasn't sure if my method of discipline was working until recently when a kid was pinching another kid, and just as I was about to say "simpatico", a little boy said it before me. Hearing my method being carried on by one of the kids was so meaningful for me because I knew that I had gotten through to this little boy and actually made a small difference in his life. 4. How did your project(s) go from an idea or inspiration to a final product? Share out the process and be sure to upload evidence of this work. The idea for the "Rincon de Salud" aka "Health Corner" as my main project was given to me by the coordinator. My inspiration for its design came from my idea of a pediatrician's office. I started by doodling out fonts and animals, and then went to the store to buy the materials I needed that the school didn't have (markers, erasers, and a pencil sharpener). Then I took my doodles and put them onto big paper I found in the paper cabinet. After coloring and cutting all of the animals, I arranged everything up onto the wall I was assigned. (Sidenote - the day after I finished taping everything up they told me to take it all down and move it to another wall in the office.) The ideas for my secondary projects came simply from observing the activities we did in class and thinking about how I could come up with activities that taught the kids things I saw they didn't know. My process for coming up with these ideas was simple: observe what the kids don't know, think of a way to teach them, and then talk to the teachers about when I could implement my lesson. I am proud to say I have led one official lesson, as well as several little activities. 5. What did you learn about yourself through working on the internship project(s)? I learned that I love working with children; especially when I see them understand what I teach them. I also learned that I can draw better than I thought I could. I learned this because I had to draw for my project, and my teacher has been asking me to draw various things for activities she's done with the kids. (For example, I drew a cow, rabbit, and some fish for an activity last week, and today I drew two people and various clothing items for an activity she's doing tomorrow). Wow! I cannot believe in one short week I will be turning in my role as the teacher to be a student once again. The end of internship is bitter-sweet to me; I love my internship, but I miss San Diego and my friends. Coming back to school, I have an idea on how to make high school more similar to a professional workplace. As well as some skills and perspectives I will be bringing back that will help me to become a better student.
First off, when doing group projects (as we often do in HTHI) teachers should assign roles within the project to each person in the group. For example, there is an assigned leader who is in charge of managing the group and is the communicator between the group and the teacher. If the product is a writing piece, there are assigned editors in the group. If the project involves art, there is a lead artist. By assigning roles, the groups will be more like a workplace. In a workplace (the daycare/preschool I work in for instance), there is a head coordinator, coordinator, and the teachers, and every person knows the responsibilities of their position. This set-up (of assigned roles) helps eliminate miscommunication and confusion. I will be bringing back with me the idea of a classroom from a teacher's perspective. As a teacher these last few weeks, I have learned that there is more prep work for class than I knew about. Last Friday, the teacher had me draw a rabbit, cow, and three fish for an activity she did on Monday. Drawing and coloring in those animals took me almost the entire two hour block when the kids were sleeping on Friday. Sure, I am slightly a perfectionist and am therefore not the fastest drawer, but my point is that there is a lot of prep work for class activities that takes away a teacher's free time. I now have more appreciation for all of the work my teachers do outside of class in order for class to run smoothly. I also will be bringing back some new found skills I have acquired. The most prominent skill I will be bringing is patience. Before internship, I did not have much patience with anything. However, working with a class full of three year olds has taught me to be more patient with others. Additionally, I have learned that it's okay to step back from my typical leader personality sometimes. While I love my internship, there are certainly things I would change regarding classroom activities and bathroom routines. But since I am an intern, I have accepted the fact that the teachers can run the school day how they would like and it's not really my place to make suggestions. Which, although it frustrates me sometimes, I have realized is okay. Today I had the pleasure of viewing some of my friend's blogs to see how their internships are going.
1. Chris Mercer (http://cmercerinternship.weebly.com/blog) After viewing the test website Chris created for the company he's interning for, I have realized how much he is helping the company. I saw their website before he started working there, and it was a mess. It was messy and difficult to navigate, but Chris's new website he's creating, I can already tell, is a million times neater and easier to navigate. 2. Abril Centurion (http://abrilcenturiondp.weebly.com/blog) It was clear from Abril's blog that she is really enjoying her internship and is incredibly passionate about film making. I was really intrigued to read about her project, in which she is creating a video about gender roles and stereotypes. I am totally fascinated by those topics and am really interested to see how her project turns out. 3. Alexis Roman (http://alexisroman.weebly.com/internship-blog) The California Innocence Project (where Alexis is interning) is so interesting to me, so I was really happy to read that Alexis is loving her internship. After reading through all of the cool work she gets to do (reading inmates letters!!) and how much she is enjoying it, I can totally picture Alexis as a lawyer and I hope that she continues on that path. For my main project, I designed and decorated a space in the recreation room to be used as a "doctor's office" when the doctor visits every other Wednesday. First, I moved all of the furniture to set up a waiting area/weighing station, a nurse's station, and the doctor's station. Over the last 5 days I drew a sign and various animals to decorate the space (I went with an animal theme because kids love animals and will therefore feel safe around them). Today, I moved the furniture back to where I wanted it (since over the weekend someone had moved all of the furniture) and hung up all of my decorations. I also put stuffed animals on the shelves of the bookcase and filled the medicine cabinet with some basic necessities: band-aids, cotton, and anti-bacterial. In some ways, my internship is very similar to school, to state the obvious similarity - I am working in a school. However, despite the obvious similarity, working in a preschool and attending high school are incredibly different. First off, I am the teacher instead of the student. It's incredibly interesting to see school from a different point of view. Second, the kids receive four meals a day at school and have nap time; whereas at high school I have one meal during the day and no nap time. The work week and school week are fairly similar in the sense that I have to wake up before 7am for both and leave work/school around similar times (work - 4pm, school - 3:25pm). They're similar in that at school and at work we do activities, but the activities themselves are totally different. At school we are constantly doing assignments like writing and researching, but the kids at my internship have assignments like playing on the playground or playing with legos. Another difference is that with school I often have work on the weekends but as the teacher at my internship my work week is strictly Monday-Friday 8am-4pm.
My main responsibility at school is to finish my work and turn it in. Of course I have other responsibilities too, but my sole responsibility is to complete my assignments. At internship, I couldn't possibly figure out my sole responsibility because I do so much: walk the kids to meals, serve meals, make sure the kids eat, clear the dishes, walk the kids to the bathroom, grab the toilet paper from the classroom, give the kids soap to wash their hands, help wash their hands, problem solve with the kids, reprimand the kids, lay out the blankets on top of the kids for nap time, clean up the blankets, lead activities, help lead activities, and so much more. Plus, my responsibilities are always changing depending on what the teacher needs that day. For example, today my teacher gave me the responsibility of drawing a cow, three fish, and a rabbit for an activity we will be doing on Monday. The interactions I have with the teachers and kids are completely different from school. At school, I feel like there is a lot of respect between the students and teachers. At internship though, I feel like I have to gain the respect from the teachers, instead of receiving respect as soon as I walk into the building. With the kids though, I feel like I did have their respect as soon as I walked into the building. But the amount of respect is way less than that of my peers at HTHI. The way the teachers speak to me is completely different from school as well. If the teacher needs toilet paper, for example, she won't ask "Can you grab the toilet paper please?" instead she just yells "Paper!". My time at internship is spent different as well. At school I have a designated lunch time in which I have 40 minutes of break. At internship, my "break" is when the kids go down for nap time. But that isn't really a break. I use that time to eat my lunch (since I am focused on the kids at lunch time) and work on my project. I think this internship has confirmed the fact that I want to pursue a career working with kids. I have realized that although they sometimes drive me crazy, I love their energy and happiness. I feel instantly happier when I am helping them build lego towers or holding their hand while they slide down the slide. I also enjoy seeing them finally process a lesson I've taught them. For instance, I taught the kids to share the swing on the playground by starting a count up. When a kid gets on the swing, I push them for ~30 seconds while counting out loud to 30. Once I get to 30 I stop the swing and the kid gets off and the next comes on. No arguing. When I first played with the kids on the playground on Tuesday, they would argue and cry and push each other over who got to ride the swing. Now, though, the kids are really good about getting off the swing when their turn is up and waiting in line for their next turn. Seeing this change in their behavior has been so rewarding for me. I will definitely be bringing the characteristic 'patience' back to school with me. I have always thought of myself as kind of an impatient person, yet working with 17 three year olds has definitely instilled a patience in me I didn't know I had. I use this new-found patience when teaching them lessons and waiting for them to finish eating/using the bathroom. I also use this patience when the teachers have the kids watch two hours of TV as an activity and I just have to sit there and watch the same little music videos play over and over and over again. In addition, the kids' patience has inspired me to be more patient. While I fumble with Spanish words trying to arrange the sentence I want to say, the kids just wait and listen until I say what I want to. They could just stop listening and walk away but they stay and wait for me and it's really nice. I am really happy to be gaining this characteristic and I am sure I will be using it in my life back at school. For my main project I will be setting up/decorating the community health area inside the school. This area will be used as the "doctor's office" when the doctors visit the school to check up on the kids every other Wednesday. The center will be on one side of the recreation room. So far I have arranged the furniture to mimic a pediatrician's office: I turned the "examination table" so it's perpendicular to the wall so there is space on both sides for the doctor to stand, set up the regular table as a "nurse's station" where the doctor can take the kids' blood pressure (a little chair is next to the table), and created a weighing station/waiting area on the wall adjacent to the "doctor's office". Over the next few days I will be making a large sign for the area, so its clear what the space is. For decorations, I am going to be making posters of different animals (since I am not allowed to paint the walls). My mini-project is to plan and lead some activities with the three year olds. One lesson I want to do is teach the kids the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and play "Simon Says" to teach them body parts. Another lesson I want to do is go over the colors in the rainbow and have the kids draw their own rainbows to teach them their colors; the last few days I have noticed they don't know all of their colors and really like the color yellow. Tomorrow I will be speaking with the teachers to find out when I can do my lessons. The daycare center I am interning at is in the heart of the San Roque neighborhood, which is in the center-south of Quito. The daycare center is in the same building as an elementary school. The building itself looks like it belongs in Europe with its red bricks, oval-shaped windows, and large staircase. The playground is in the front of the building, and a fence lines its perimeter. The playground equipment, made entirely out of wood and metal pipes, contains a few tiny slides, a swing, a decaying rope bridge, and monkey bars. The daycare center is on the second floor of the building. The door to the daycare center is open, and the center itself is comprised of a long hallway covered in bright paintings. The first door on the right is the office, diagonally across on the left side of the hallway is the classroom for the 1 year olds. Next to the one year old's classroom is the recreation room; next door on the left is the three year old's classroom. At the end of the hallway are the 2-3 year old's classroom and the 2 year old's classroom. The hallway extends to the right and leads to the dining area and the bathroom. The first thing I do when I arrive is sign in (time I arrive and signature). Then, I go to the 3 year old's classroom where I act as a teacher's aide. At 8:30 we take the kids to the cafeteria for breakfast. After breakfast, we do an activity with the kids: drawing, painting, story time, singing, etc. Around 10 the kids go to snack. After that is finished, we take all of the kids to the bathroom. Next we do a few more activities with the kids. At noon-ish the kids come inside to eat lunch. After lunch, I help pass out the toothbrushes so the kids can go brush their teeth in the bathroom. Once they are done, they go down for a two hour nap. During this time I assist the teacher with anything she needs (cleaning, preparing for activities, etc). When nap time is over, I help take all of the kids to the bathroom and then sit them down to eat afternoon snack (around 3ish). Finally, I help the kids gather all of their belongings and wait with them on the benches in the hallway for their parents. The last thing I do before I leave is sign out by writing the time I leave. These past two days I have been acting as a teachers aide in the three year old's classroom. I help run activities, take kids to the bathroom, serve food, play with the kids, and anything else the teacher needs me to do. Through these past two days I have realized that my Spanish skills really need polishing; I can understand the adults majority of the time, but it's almost impossible for me to understand the kids. However, the kids speak in broken Spanish, slur their words, and/or are pretty quiet, so my lack of understanding isn't entirely because of my sub-par Spanish skills (they have taught me a few new words though!). I really enjoy playing with the kids; they are incredibly sweet and full of energy. I also like that I almost constantly have something to do at my internship, and that the teachers treat me as an equal. They are even letting me plan and lead some activities with the kids! As for dislikes, I don't like that TV time is one of the activities that occurs almost every day. Today, for instance, the teachers had the kids watch TV for 2 hours. There are millions of other activities that could fill that time and be more educational. As a whole, I am enjoying my internship and I look forward to the next two and a half weeks!
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About MeHi! My name is Ashley Price. I am in 11th grade at High Tech High International. I enjoy doing musical theater, being co-founder of my school's improv team, traveling, dancing, singing, and hanging out with my friends. I am looking to attend college in the Northeast, and major in psychology. I am currently interested in pursuing the career of either a speech therapist or a jury consultant. I am incredibly excited for my internship!
About My InternshipI am interning at a daycare center in the San Roque neighborhood in Quito, Ecuador. Below is a link to the webpage about my internship through Bolivar Education. http://www.ecuadorvolunteers.org/ecuador-volunteer-programs/children-youth-volunteering-ecuador/quito-san-roque-daycare.html#prettyPhoto ArchivesCategoriesPhoto Gallery |