Final Reflection

1. Look back to your earliest posts. What were your goals? Did you achieve these goals? If so, what did you have to do consistently to achieve the goals?
A: My goals for this internship were to be a good intern and  responsible. Yes, I achieve these goals. I really wanna work and study with the kids, when I go to internship I do my best to help the kids solve problems. so based on this reason to achieve the goals.
2. What are the most important ideas or skills you’ve learned in the last 12 weeks?
A: I learned the most important idea is collaborate because have some questions rely on yorself is not enough to solve, so have to collaborate with group members because differnent people have differnet brain to thinking so put ideas together then choose the best. That could easier to solve question.
3. In what ways have your grown as a student and young adult?
A: In this internship I am a teacher  assistant. So I work with the kids. I must be change my way be mature. I really do it,when I go to internship I am more mature than before. I am the model of the kids. 
4. What were the highlights (memorable moments) of your internship experience?
A:  Chinese New Year's Eve. I got many candies, boondoggle,and Celebrate Cards from the kids.
5. What have you learned about the professional world?
A: I think when I am work in the society. So that time I am not a student any more. I have to care a lot of things such as do everything be prefectly, on time, do the best, and respect all.
6. What challenges did you overcome?
A: I think my challenge is my weakness by shy. But I really overcome that. Before I am not good and scare talking with fresh guys, Now I overcome that, I never scare that.  Yeah!
7. If you were to start internship next week, what is at least one thing you would do differently?
A: If internship start next week I will control my mouth and wacth time do thing. I will be a real man.
8. Think of two to three pieces of advice you could offer a new intern at your site.
A: 1. Do anything have to respect each other.
    2. Do your best.
    3. Do not nervous face to anything.
9. What will you miss about your internship?
A: I will miss all my new friends (students and teachers). They are very nice and remainded me of my childhood. I really miss theirs.

Thank you Letter

04/15/2011

Dear Ms. Kelly,

      Thank you so much for being my mentor this year. I really appreciate you gave me this opportunity to work with the intelligent, respectful, and cute kids. During this internship, I learned how to communicate well with them. I think they are innocent and lively, and their happy faces infected me with joy. I loved to work with them! Interning with you gave me real work experience.

I really appreciate that you offered me this job because it reminded me of my childhood. This is the first time I got to works with lots of baby friends (almost babies). I will miss you and all of my friends there. Thank you for paying attention of me and treating me so nicely. I will never forget this wonderful time.

Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart!

Sincerely,

LiangHui(Justin) Zhao

Photo Essay

Here is main office. we have to sign in and  sign out at there. Usually we sign in at 12:00PM and sign out at 3:00PM. Sometimes we help the teacher bring some information copy  at there.

This photo is my class(103) by internship. Everyday when I go to internship I have to go to this class.This class is very clean and get fresh air. I have more fun memories in there.I really love this class and of course love all the students and teachers.

This photo is Ms.Boyer Madssion and me. she is a very nice teacher.she is a first grade teacher in 103. She can speak spanish and Englsih. She always teach me how to contol the naughty kids.  Thank you!

This photo is class 103 date. Every morning have a kid to fill in date and also after school have a kid to earser it. This date can remain the kids today's date. The right bottom have the circle, the circle is mean how many days they are in the school. That is interesting.

This photo is very important to the kids. This blue paper have 4 colors such as green, yellow, orange, and white. The green card is excellence, the yellow card is good, orange card is so-so, white card is bad. So that's why is very important to the kids. I like it.

The interview

1. What is your full name?

Kelly Baxter Golding

2. Where are you from?

I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I now live in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

3. Where did you go to college? For how long? Would you like to go back to school?

I went to the University of Toronto for 4 years, then to Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo for 2 years. I sometimes think I would like to go back, but it's very expensive...I would have to have a plan for a job change before I would choose to pay for another college degree now.

4. What was your major in college and what kind of degree did you earn? Did you attend graduate school for an advanced degree? If  yes, what degree and at which school?

At the University of Toronto, I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and East Asian Studies. I attended graduate school at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, where I earned a Master's in Business Administration.

5. What made you choose your career you are working in now?

After I had my children, I stopped working for about six years. When my youngest child entered Kindergarten, I wanted some sort of job in which I could use my management and administration skills, but still stay connected to my children's education. A job at a school seemed like a good choice.

6. Why did you choose this particular job at this particular company?

There was no Parent Coordinator at Brooklyn School of Inquiry last year, and I helped to fill the job in a volunteer capacity just to help my son's school out. From that volunteer experience, I knew that I would enjoy a full-time job in the position. Last summer they offered it to me.

7. Describe the process in which you got your job. Did you interview? With how many people? How many times?

I started working at BSI as a volunteer in October 2009. In May 2010, principal Donna Taylor asked me if I would consider accepting a full-time position at the school. After discussing things with my husband, I accepted her offer. I then had to go through the formal job application process; I was interviewed by several individual people on three occasions and had a background check to make sure I was a good person to have working in a school. 

8. How long have you worked here?

I've been helping part-time since October 2009, but began full-time work as Parent Coordinator in September 2010.

9. What is your job title?

Parent Coordinator.

10. What do your duties include?

I have a wide variety of responsibilities. Some of these are: I coordinate school bus service for our families, working with the Office of Pupil Transportation. I help parents who have questions or need information about anything to do with the school or the school system. I coordinate the annual open houses we offer for parents of possible new students, and help with the process of registering new students at the school. I design spreadsheets and help with data management. I help to write grant applications, and I proofread documents and make sure that anything that goes out from the school uses proper spelling and grammar and is written in clear English.

11. What are some of the challenges you have faced working here?

There are a number of children at BSI with families who come from cultural backgrounds different from mine. Trying to be sensitive to cultural differences when interacting with these families is a challenge, especially when there is a language barrier -- we have many Russian families and I do not speak or understand Russian.

12. What is the best part of your job?

Helping the students -- when they thank me, I know it's genuine.

13. What is something you would like to change about your job?

Sometimes I wish I had a little office with a door on it, so that if I needed a quiet place to get some thinking work done I could just close the door and be private. 

14. Did you work somewhere else before this job? Where? For how long? How was that job similar or different?

I worked for four years as a management consultant with the company Accenture in Toronto. That job was similar in that a consultant also has a wide variety of responsibilities and has to be flexible. One difference was that there was a lot of travel, and another difference was that I had to wear a suit to work. The corporate environment is quite a lot more formal than the environment in a school. Also, as a consultant I was often working at a client site - in the office of the company who was hiring Accenture to do a project for them. We had to be very careful always to behave in a professional manner, to satisfy the client.  After that, I ran a small business in Toronto for four years, then I had children and stopped working for a while.

15. What do you see as your future with this company? If you plan on changing jobs, what will you do?

My education qualifies me for a higher-level job than this one, but I really enjoy where I am and what I am doing now. If my family ever gets into a position where it's important for me to earn more money to help support them, however, I would probably look at a position in consulting again, or a job as manager to one or more small businesses. I don't plan on changing jobs any time soon, though.

16. Do you enjoy the kind of work you do? Why or why not?

I enjoy most of my work very much.  I think I enjoy it in part because of the variety of things I get a chance to do every day: it never gets boring. Another part of the reason I enjoy my work is that I know it's making my son's school run better, and that means I'm making it a better place for him, and the other children there, to learn. And that's important to me.

17. Do you every plan to open your own business? If so, what kind of business will you open? Where will you open it?

I have already owned a small business in Toronto; it was a company that provided consulting services in the non-profit sector, mainly to small arts organizations. It was successful, but operating your own business requires a lot of administrative work!

18. How has having an intern helped your company or organization?

Having our interns has helped BSI in a number of ways. First, the interns were able to take over a lot of administrative work, which allowed our teachers to do more of what only they can do: educating the children. Also, it was really good for the children to be exposed to older students, and to learn about them a bit; the interns were very good role models for the young students at BSI. 

19. What advice would you give to teenage interns getting ready for college?

Don't narrow your field too quickly! Spend a lot of time thinking about whether the things you study in college are really (a) interesting to you, and/or (b) useful to you in the long run. Don't waste your time in college; the time goes by so fast, and you'll probably never have the same opportunities again to learn about things that are really interesting to you, or useful in your future.

20. What advice would you give to teenage interns preparing to find a career in the real world?

Get to know yourself really, really well. Find out what kinds of work make you happy. Then find a place where they will pay you do to one of the things that make you happy. If possible, look for a job where the end product matters to you; then, whatever your job may be, you will be able to take pride in your work and feel satisfied. Money is important - of course it is. - but enjoying what you do, and feeling satisfaction from your work, are also very, very important.

Midpoint Reflection

My internship had been  the same of my expectations, nothing changed throughout time.what similar is the people is very nice and helpful is like our school teachers and classmates. It is very awesome to work in a environmental area with each other. What different is more than 2 teachers in a classroom because the kids need help a lot of. Some skills that I had learned from internship site are be professional people and polite and respect each one that could help me apply at other jobs such as banker, teacher and waiter. Those skills will help me to develop self-confident in the future. The relationship that I have with my mentor and co-workers are really efficient. I had grown in different ways and perspective by interacting with professional adults, I had grown listening, communication, behavior, and writing. The writing skills that I had gained throughout my internship is the my English had became more mature and educated. Some others skills or abilities that I had gained so far is know how to work and play with kids. some of the challenges that I had face throughout internship is learning how to control kids when they got mad. I overcame this challenge by ask the teacher and know how to fix that, the first step is thinking how to make kids laughing when they got mad, this skill I learn from elementary school's teacher. The altered schedule had affected me change my plans. It had affected me in school work and in basketball and volleyball team, because I need to worry my homework and acclimatization traning. I need to be able to play volleyball in this season because that is be my last season from PSAL.

Artifacts

1. Scissors

These scissors are in the classroom, these scissors kids should use everyday,because everyday they have a half hour for recess. so they use  these scissors to cut paper to make someting, so I have to use these scissors to help their to cut and sometime help the teacher cut the some papers to give kids draw. so scissors I use everyday when I work in internship site.

2. Eraser

These erasers also I use everyday, because I have to help kids eraser the mistake. so these erasers are important for me in internship. sometime the kid draw a lot of garbage pictures in the table and books, so in that time I got a lot of work to do and also easer display function time. so that's why eraser is important.

3. Hand sanitizer

This hand sanitizer also I use everyday in internship site, because the kids everyday has outdoor exercise so they have to clean their dirty hands. so hand sanitizer is very important to help kids clean.

so I have to keep it whole day! so that's why I choose that.

First Impressions

My Mentor's name is Ms. Taylor . She is the principal of my internship site. She's a nice and conversational lady. I work in  a school with the first grade students. I love that class, they are so funny. sometimes make me remember my  During the internship, I have to word with the kids and help the teacher to organize the worksheets.  The most challenging part of internship so far is help some special kids to pay attention during the class. And I learn some skill to make the kids concentrate to the teacher. 

why the  subjects always got change?(Everyday got different subjects)

How many students in this school?

Does the students all from Brooklyn?

How many Chinese students in this school ? Also How many could speak Chinese?

When I ask Ms.Boyer- Madison about why the subjects always got change, she explain this school have many classes so we have to choose which day got which subjects so everyday have different subjects. Now in this school just got 75 students but the further will have 500 students. yes, all the students from Brooklyn. In this school we have around 10 Chinese students and also have around 5 students could speak Chinese. That is very nice!