I’ve been at my internship for a few weeks now and have experienced some challenges and successes.
The most challenging thing for me has been to try to figure out what hands-on experiences I want to share with my students. I have observed a lot of the soft skills that are used everywhere and I have already committed to teach these to my students. But I wanted something more. I had to figure out a product to create from this internship experience and how I will turn it into a meaningful educational resource for my students. This was one of my successes.
I am fortunate to be placed with a mentor who has experience working with Kenan Fellows. During one of our daily talks, he mentioned that the company helped sponsor one of the local high school’s FIRST Robotics team and shared its success in competitions. As coincidence would have it, just days earlier, I watched and episode of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” on HBO. One of the segments was about FIRST Robotics teams and competitions. It mentioned that many of the students who participate in the competitions usually go on to careers in STEM-related fields. This immediately piqued my interest. My mentor knows I work with middle school students and informed me that there are different categories based on age and/or grade level that lead to the high school FIRST Robotics level: (FIRST Lego League Jr. – ages 6 – 10, FIRST Lego League – grades 4-8, and FIRST Tech Challenge – grades 7-12).
Boom!
There it is! That is the product I want develop for my students. Now I realize part of the Kenan Fellowship’s history of industry-education partnerships. We, as Fellows, need to partner with businesses for support to help us broaden the learning experiences of our students. That being said, my mentor is willing to use some of the company’s community fund to sponsor our inaugural FIRST Lego League team. It will be my job to recruit team members, set up a meeting/practice schedule, etc. We’ll start out small this year and see how we can grow it in the future.
Wish us luck.