My overall reflection of my 130+ hours of work at this organization has been valuable and enlightening. I’ve developed numerous skills with the variety of activities I’ve led. In addition, my time at this program has also given me practical skills such as conflict resolution, communication and administrative skills. I was also given extensive trainings on safety of the students, proper conduct and mandated reporting. These online certifications helped open my eyes to the many signs of struggling or abused children and kept me alert. Being in a classroom with these same students everyday allowed me to see the different sides of them as people. Sometimes there would be incidents of hurt feelings and I would have to mediate the conflict while also still tending to the rest of the class. Finally through the activities I learned a lot about the students as may of the projects gave them creative freedom. I used the classes similar to a focus group; I would see how they reacted to certain things and used that information to adjust other lesson plans.
I feel like I gained useful skills and information participating in this internship that will transfer to my career in design. Things like communicating ideas to groups and using their feedback to evolve my work. Or even conflicts in the classroom showed me how people can react emotionally over things they are passionate about, which can be both good and bad. The interactions I had with the students also helped me deal with criticism because they were brutally honest about everything. In conclusion my results of the internship have given me a lot. Although I taught the lessons I’ve learned the most.
