Throughout this internship, I’ve learned a lot from my workplace and from the Ogallala Commons resources such as the cohort calls. I thought that it might be difficult to keep pace with the internship while also doing activities such as community service, but I realized that it was a great use of my time to learn from Ogallala Commons and learn about the events in my own community and others.
The main part of my internship was to create a curriculum centered around the standardized test, TSIA. When I first was assigned this task, I did not know if I would be able to create something that I would be proud of. I had never done anything like this before so at first it was quite a lot to visualize how I would succeed in my task. After a lot of meetings, looking at other resources that people have used, and communication with my peers, the task was not quite out of my reach as I initially anticipated. I had a to rewrite a lot of material as I learned more about the test and what was going to be on it, but I eventually started to improve on how to communicate instructions and explanations over written communication. After a lot of review from the people I had learned from and communicated with, I believe that I had created something that I was proud of. Proud of that fact that I felt confident in its ability to be able to assist the students in their journey to education and that I had made something that would improve my community and surrounding ones.
After this experience, I believe that I have succeeded in completing all the goals I had set for myself. I wanted to improve my written communication skills and I believe I have done that. I spent a lot of time learning how to write emails, working with Microsoft Word and Excel, and just increase my comfort level with writing in general. I also wanted to be successful in my creation of the curriculum because I believe that it has made me a better leader in my community, leading and assisting students with their secondary education. Lastly, I got to make many connections through the meetings I had and interacting with the other members of AmeriCorps. These connections are going to be helpful for my future professional career as I’ll able to use the knowledge I had gained from these connections and use my experience to make new ones.
