Author: Jared Pinkson

For July 30th.

Describe your internship experience. I have been able to work with engineers and non engineers at GE aviation work as an engineer, machinist, environmental health and safety, human resource, planning and have really been able to learn how to better engage my students in preparing to work in not only companies like GE aviation but almost all the jobs in our area.

What was the most interesting moment? Learning from each of the workers at GE their personal road map to their career. Each person coming to the same job from wildly different approaches, showing that anyone that is driven to learn and succeed can.

What was your biggest challenge? My biggest challenge was either not being able to actually touch a lot of the machinery, which was like being told not to touch the shiny red button, Ren and Stimpy reference for readers to old or young. After that, it was scheduling times to meet with everyone and finding the right questions to ask to get each worker to open up their inner workings as they worked their job.

What is your biggest takeaway? No matter what your interests are, or your goals there are jobs for you in most companies. You might look at an aviation facility and think there are no jobs for you there, but they have jobs for artists, business, mechanics, machinists, thinkers and hard workers, not just engineers.

How has your knowledge of career opportunities changed as a result of your internship experience? I think I can see better how each company may have more jobs than you would think of by just looking at their main functions.

What was the highlight of my week at Kenan? Where to begin, do I start with adventures and giants, or discovering life under river rock, speckled salamanders, building a brands, delving (dwelling? or new word dwelving?) into my personality to make discoveries about myself and how I relate to others. I think the adventures were great, the discoveries fascinating, but the absolute highlight was getting a chance to meet all the other wonderful Kenan Fellows. Meeting these people let me know that there are more people out there driven to help our kids and that they are spread across our great state. I am excited to be around this group of teachers.

This professional development experience has been different because of these teachers starting their Kenan Journey and the teacher guiding us at Kenan. They are raw, encouraging, fun and exciting and it fills me with pride to get a chance to work with them and learn from them. I think highly of all the colleagues I have worked with as a teacher, but at Kenan I have found a kinship or a like minded attitude about building a better future and turning better into the best (not just a 4H nod, I think these teacher embody this motto).

For me I plan to use a lot from the ideas in the professional development lessons, like I am definitely going to do the painter tape murals with my kids. I love the way it allows students to engage in their vision of what they want out of their education and allows them to reshape their vision throughout the semester. But, I am excited about engaging my kids with a personal teaching brand we developed with Mark Townley. For me it was three words Think, Build, Do, that I plan on integrating into mission statement through out my class. I think it will help my kids engage better with the way I teach and it excites me.

I am kind of cheating on this blog, my answering this prompt is suppose to be done before my fellowship begins, but I have had trouble getting into this site. I think is maybe harder to think on my hope from then after all I received in during our 1st week in the Kenan Program.

I would say I hoped to learn a few tricks to improve my teaching for my kids, and to engage in working in the industry I teach to better my ability to mentor my students, and I am getting all of that. My start has been uplifting, filled with personal growth, and adventure. I think I am getting so much more but I feel that is meant for another post.