My internship experience has been insightful and fun! I have pages of notes about the expertise and skills used by people working in different departments at Carowinds. I’ve been thinking about how to apply and relate the content standards taught in 2nd grade to some of the real-world job responsibilities I’ve observed onsite during my internship.
My biggest challenge so far has been trying to take all of the information I’ve learned and organize it into a project. The word “project” is so broad and open, so I’ve gone through multiple ideas. I think I initially misunderstood receiving lesson plan guidelines provided by Kenan as the scope in which I had to create my project. I kept asking myself, “Should my project be a curriculum unit? Should it be a set of lessons within a unit? I knew it needed to be more than something just impacting only my students.
A week later – more clarity! My thoughts became less of a whirlwind after meeting with our CMS group of Kenan Fellows onsite at Duke Energy on July 13th. Folks on the Kenan team also eased my mind by clarifying program expectations. The collaboration and feedback from everyone was terrific. I felt so supported! I left Duke Energy with a more focused mindset on what I wanted to accomplish with my project, and realized that part of my work will be at a micro level (the classroom) and part of it will be at a macro level (extended outside my classroom).
We all shared our individual experiences from our internships at the Duke Energy meeting. We have noticed a consistent theme across the board at our internships: Collaborative planning, teamwork, communication, and effective teaching methods are essential skills to achieve goals and meet expectations in today’s workforce.
Based on this shared consensus, I have developed a working title which is helping me construct my work as I move forward. I know we don’t have to establish a title, but this is helping me stay on the right track.
It’s ironic that just by working together and getting feedback from others in a short period of time improved my own focus on what I needed to do! I also spoke to another Kenan fellow on the phone. She did her internship at Carowinds last year. It was great having her support. She listened to my plans and also gave me great feedback on how to move forward, what questions to ask, and ways to enhance some of my ideas. I am not alone in this venture – which became very apparent this week. I am feeling successful after talking and listening to other teachers and mentors.