Prompt: Describe your internship position duties, tasks, and responsibilities – describe four different things you learned at your internship via observation, from practice, or from assignment:
1. I’ve learned a lot about how to create educational programs by observing my supervisor at work and reading her information write ups for the promo material for each school involved in our programming. I learned that when you create a program for school field trip, and you aren’t associated with the school directly but are an outside source, there are certain requirements of information that you are mandated to require in your reports to the school. For example, detailed in the field trip description must be how your programming ties into key curriculum and head contacts of the organization (even if those head contacts aren’t involved in the field trip itself). Aiding in field trips for different schools, even though each grade only goes to one trip a season, the preparation for each trip begins midsummer. Coming into my internship, I’ve observed less of the brainstorming for programs, but more of the fine tuning of preexisting programs. An important part of this process is attending teacher meetings to go over the exact time layout of each trip, how it will interfere in the school day, bus times, and where bathroom breaks, snack, and lunch will be taken. All of these observations have been vital when it comes to carrying out my own assignments around elementary education. With this background, I understand the overall goal and focus of each individual field trip and am able to best employ the information that I’ve learned through my own schooling to educating kids K-5 and highschool. My first day teaching, while I was the new volunteer on the trip and had no experience with the task at hand, having been part of the prep work gave me one advantage: understanding where we were coming from and what our goal was. If I hadn’t been part of that process observing my supervisor and the school system teachers, I wouldn’t understand that it isn’t so much about teaching the kids hard facts, but getting them to make connections between themselves and the environment. Regardless if they remember a fact rattled off on the beach, they’re going to remember the overall experience as they grow up and that will help drive them towards developing their own environmental consciousness. With this understanding, I am able to take on leading small groups of children through stations and engaging them with flora and fauna in local ecosystems and give them a reason to get excited about getting outside.
2. Another task assignment I have deals with trail creation and how to perform research, some legal and some informational. I began this semester’s internship by undergoing the kick off to a new fitness trail program we are trying to create. Through my task I learned by trial and error how to complete legal and informational research about state guidelines in trail creation and ADA compliance, and then complete a report that could go into a budget or board meeting and be professionally composed. When I first started this project, I began just googling related topics and trying to figure out where to find the information I needed, and what “ADA” even meant. Once I figured out what a reliable source of information was, through practice of detailed searches I was able to find not only guidebooks on the subject, but also state and federal department papers and guidelines. After composing my paper report, which went through a couple of different drafts to go from a bulleted google doc to an actual report, my supervisor took our fitness trail proposal to the board and pitched it for one of our year long projects with other information for our Alternative Education group. I certainly didn’t expect that the research I did would be put into effect so quickly and that I would be around for so much of the execution of this project. It really puts into perspective that the tasks you’re handed as an intern do have a larger scope. Moving forward in the coming weeks I will be working with Alternative Education kids from Kennebunkport to put these plans I created into use, clearing away the trail, budgeting, and problem solving how to install the fitness equipment.
3. One assignment that I’m quite excited for I get to put into action this coming Friday. Instead of working on an already created educational program, I got to create my own Habitat Walk and Talk for our Learning Trail. This involved going out onto the trails, marking different locations with important ecosystems or habitat factors, and learning a bit more about the history of the land we work on. From there, I got to write up my own educational talk and decide what parts of the pathways I wanted to utilize for hands on activities. This coming Friday, a group of freshmen from Kennebunkport will be coming to the Emmons preserve, and I’m tasked with leading my first solo lesson. This assignment applies multiple different factors of this internship: research, application of my own education, conservation, and teaching skills. I hope that I will get to learn from my own successes and failures what I can reuse or need to fix up a bit more for the next Habitat Walk I will do later in my internship. This assignment is also going to help me become a better succinct public speaker, and hopefully being in a group leadership setting I will improve my oral communication skills.
4. The last major part of my job is clerical work at the Trust. This involves anything from inputting emails to inventorying supplies or sorting images and stuffing envelopes. When my supervisor is busy trying to pull together programming and respond to daily inquires from the board, teachers, parents, etc, it’s necessary for me to be able to provide what assistance I can as an intern and not a full time staff member with access to every resource. On these days, I learn more about how the nonprofit is organized, streamlining repetitive tasks for efficiency, and where to find answers to questions I have without interrupting my supervisor. Really this has helped me to become more of a successful self-starter and problem solver. Even the simplest of task, such as loading a DVD of images onto a computer platform you’re unfamiliar with can be a hurdle to overcome. When you’re trying to be self sufficient though, where do you turn to for all of the answers such as loading DVDs, using new programs, or detailed functions of Excel? I’ve learned how to find office resource books, and also where to look online for help. These assignments have also taught me though that I don’t always have the attention span for long office days staring at a computer, and perhaps a career path along those lines isn’t meant for me. Luckily, I work in an environment where taking a break to go outside and walk the property we conserve is promoted, and my supervisor believes that sitting for 6 hours at a computer isn’t going to improve productivity. Clerical work needs to be done in a timely manner though, and I’ve worked hard to get it done on the day it’s assigned and before the deadline. Getting things done immediately opens me up for other clerical work, and also makes the day go by faster than spending more time on one task. There’s a fine line though between rushing a task and doing it effectively, and I’ve learned through practice where that line exists. I always worry that through internship assignments I will underperform in my supervisor’s expectations, but I think from the feedback I’ve received that I completing quality work on clerical days.
