Self advocacy is easily one of the most important skills you can have in the workplace. I see the kids do it every single day at mine. They seem to have an easy time asking for help and saying when they don't understand something, which is something I try to emulate. Saying you don't understand something is hard, at least for me. But I've been pretty lucky at my internship to not have to ask for help too often. Something that I've noticed is when you need help in a school setting, the teachers are always more than happy to offer help, you don't even have to say anything. When I get confused or I don't know something, my mentor seems to know before I can say anything. I think that I'm really lucky to have a mentor like that and have her be so open to doing things or answering questions.
I don't really remember the "How to be an intern everyone remembers." But so far, I've always gone to internship dressed nicely, and always ready to do whatever my mentor asks. I think that that has been working out so far. The kids keep asking if I'm going to first grade with them, which is honestly the cutest thing I've ever heard in my life.
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For my internship project, we decided that I would be working on several lessons for the kids. The first one I worked on was based around the book "The Tiny Seed" by Eric Carle. I read the kids the book and asked several questions, like "What does a seed need to grow?" and "Why couldn't this seed grow?" and such. Then we began to create something. For the first lesson, we created a timeline of a seed. Today, we made vegetable soup art. Tomorrow, we're going back to the tiny seed and creating our very own flowers.
My project is essentially creating mini lessons and activities related to books we're reading in class. We're focusing on plants and how seeds grow for now. Most of the skills I will need are skills I've needed this whole time: Communication, to communicate with my mentor and my students, and creativity, to design and create the projects. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and the only issue is how nervous I get before starting them. But so far, I think I'm doing okay. I only really need support from my mentor and the classes I work with. Overall things have been going great. ReflectionAs I wait for the responses to the mentor interview, I figured I would go ahead and post the reflection of my first week at internship.
The first thing I want to talk about is the commute from home to internship. It's been an interesting week mostly because I don't know how to drive and so I rely pretty heavily on my mom driving me to and from, but traffic is different every day even we leave at a consistent time. Something else that happened this week is the fact that every day I've gotten out at a little bit of a different time (Between 2:20-2:35/ish). It's been unique. Something I've noticed that connects this internship to class is the amount of things I learned from the ant project, the trout project, and other projects we did with kids. Those projects helped prepare me to deal with talking to the students and not underestimating them, which helps with my project. I also learned a lot about self-advocacy and confidence that is key for working with kids. They'll listen to you as long as you sound like you mean it. Some skills I've been developing are my communication skills and my presentation skills. For my project, I have to read a book to the kinds and then we'll do a project on it. That has helped improve both skills as there's a lot of talking and explaining involved. So far at internship, I have had a really great time working with the kids and I look forward to the next twelve days of internship. Day one of internship! I think it went really well. All the kids were really sweet and friendly and they all responded really well to me being there. I think, though, that what stuck me about it is that I used to go to the school and so everything is really familiar, and when something isn't the same as it was when I went, it feels odd. I really do enjoy the environment there, though.
I don't work with a lot of people other than my mentor; but from who I have they're all really cool accommodating if I don't understand something or need help. They're all really friendly and I look forward to working with them some more. I think that the idea that I'm actually working with and teaching children is what strikes me the most. Even if this is the last teaching related thing I ever do (Which it won't be) I'll still have made somewhat of an impact. I think that will help to keep me mindful of what I'm doing with them. I am most excited to spend some time at my old school and learn a lot more about teaching in general. I think that it will help me become more self assured and more comfortable in my skills, and growing more comfortable and okay with helping other people. I don't know if I'm worried about anything, other than I want people to like me and I'm worried I won't do a good job. I bet that that's a common fear, though. I hope that these fears will alleviate over time. I did my career day with my dad, rather than at my internship.
During this day, I spent time in my dad's cubicle and watched him do tests with lights. On the floor, right of his computer was an array of garden lights. Originally, they were all lit up white. Throughout the day, he shifted them to blue, orange, pink and green.. Then eventually through the whole rainbow. It was great. He showed me all the steps to running the tests, from the setup to them to the protocol if a test is failed. The environment is really nice. There's a creek running behind the building that has ducks in it. There's a lot of squirrels around, as well. It's very calming and everything. Something else I noticed was that my dad came in a little later than everyone else. I think it's because he has to drop me off at school in the mornings, but his boss seems fine with it. It seems like a very comfortable work space. There's a lot of friendly people and it seems really nice there. The dress code seems a lot like high tech. Collars, polo shirts, jeans. Professional, but not overtly so. I fit right in in my cardigan and jeans. All in all, I had a pretty good time. It made me more excited for my actual internship, which is at an Elementary school. I disliked how quiet the office got, but I guess that's to be expected with an office. But overall, I would do it again. |