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Highlights from “Education/Social Service Internships” Panel
1/21/05
Moderator: Aileen Kim
PRESENTERS
Laura Spece, College Undergraduate, Biochemistry Intern, Office of College & Career Awareness, School District of Philadelphia
Brian Linde, College Undergraduate, History Teacher, Breakthrough Collaborative
Cathleen Tocknell, College Undergraduate, English Appalachia Service Project, Finances Staff
Emily Previti, College Undergraduate, English and Environmental Studies Resident Advisor, Governor’s School on the Environment
Gena Seroogy, College Undergraduate, Urban StudiesFund Development Intern, STRIVE New York
DISCUSSION
What internships have you done thus far? How did you hear about the program/organization? What did you do for them?
Spece
• I started last January with the Office of College and Career Awareness, School District of Philadelphia. I worked on the new Success Center Initiative, in which I helped to make proper computer centers through which high school students can do college searches.
• After I helped set up the Center, I helped them with a summer program called Classroom, Inc., a computer-based teaching program.
• Now I do some floating work for the school district, working with individual schools in the area.
• I heard about the job through my sorority.
Linde
• I worked the past two summers with the Breakthrough Collaborative.
• The first summer I worked at Summerbridge Cambridge and the second summer I worked at Breakthrough Long Island.
• I taught math to middle school students both summers. It’s mostly children from low-income school districts who commit to going for two summers.
• The program is challenging because it takes time to prepare a curriculum. The hours are usually from 8 – 5, with longer hours if there are special events.
• Right now I’m looking for a teaching job myself, and Breakthrough has helped enormously. You don’t have to do Breakthrough necessarily, but having some kind of teaching experience helps a lot.
Tocknell
• I spent the past two summers working for the Appalachia Service Project. It’s a project that does home repair for low-incoming families.
• You’re at a site with three other students and you’re in charge of picking construction projects and managing them for families that apply for it. You live in a school, have all of your expenses paid, and you’re given an old pick-up truck to drive, so your gas is paid for, too.
• The projects ranged from a drainage ditch to a bathroom addition to installing a septic tank. They teach you how to do all of it. Then you do programming at night for the volunteers to educate them on the regional issues of poverty.
• It’s a more-than-12-hours-a-day job, but it’s very rewarding.
• I found out about them because I worked with them in high school.
• Penn has a summer fee waiver program that cuts down your expected contribution to your financial aid package if you do volunteer work, so I did that.
Previti
• This past summer I worked for the New Jersey Governor’s School. It is a summer enrichment program for high school juniors. They’re usually divided by subject matter or focus. NJ has schools on the environment, performing arts and international affairs.
• It was a July 4 – 30 overnight program at a college in New Jersey.
• A typical day would be for everyone to have breakfast together and the scholars would go to class while the staff had free time. In the afternoon, the scholars would have more class or free time which the staff would have to supervise. In the evenings, they would have an evening lecture or we would organize activities for them.
• The Governor’s School takes a lot of field trips, so I helped out on those. It’s kind of like summer camp for smart kids. It was fun, laid-back and paid pretty well.
• The only downside may be that you don’t have a life outside of the program for those months, but you’ll be with fun people.
• I knew the Assistant to the Director personally, so that’s how I got the job. They usually ask former Governor’s School scholars to come back, too.
Seroogy
• I worked this past summer in Harlem, New York for STRIVE (Support and Training Result in Valuable Employees) New York, a workforce development organization. It’s an organization that provides social services and motivational and general job training skills. They teach skills such as how to write a resume, how to dress appropriately and how to interview. They do work in prisons, with people coming off of welfare, and people who have been chronically unemployed.
• I didn’t get much contact with clients, but I helped write grant proposals. I found out about it through a friend, but they have a website (http://www.strivenewyork.org). It’s a national organization but the headquarters is in New York.
What else did you consider doing?
Linde
• The first summer, Breakthrough was my first choice so when I got that, that settled it. The second summer, I already knew that I wanted to go back because I’d done it before.
Spece
• I worked at a lab since the summer before freshman year. I needed a break, so I was looking for something else. I’d always had a passion for education in low-income urban areas, so I jumped on the opportunity that I got. It was a nice break from Penn.
Previti
• My experience was also a break from Penn. The campus that I was on was in the middle of the woods, so that’s something else that attracted me. I didn’t consider any other options because it was the first thing I heard about.
Tocknell
• I figure that I have my entire life to live in a city, so that’s why I chose something that’s not in a city. The position also entailed a lot of responsibility, too, and I enjoyed that.
Seroogy
• I wanted to be in a city, because I’d never been to New York before. It was tough financially, but it was a great experience and helped me get life experience, such as living on a budget.
Q&A
Q: Laura (Spece), I’m interested in urban education. Does the Philadelphia School District have policy-oriented internships?
Spece
• How the school district is structured is that there are several separate academies within each of the GEAR UP high schools. There are about seven GEAR UP schools, which are primarily low-income schools.
• Do you mean policy or curriculum writing? Policy.
• Grant-writing, allocation of funds to different schools, etc. are done through the District, so there are probably positions in those areas.
Q: With Breakthrough, do teachers live in a dorm?
Linde
• It depends on which program you join. In some, housing is provided. In others, there is a home stay program, and still others offer a stipend if you’re on financial aid.
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