I worked as a summer project intern for Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS): Community Connectors – a program created to support new American middle and high school students in Central Ohio through one-on-one mentorship and other resources. A fellow intern and I planned and implemented a summer program named “Keys for Rooting Change” for students of Columbus Global Academy.
This summer program was one that had never been done before, either at Columbus Global Academy, or through CRIS Community Connectors. Additionally, neither I, nor my fellow intern, had ever developed a program for students before. All parties involved went into the experience with open eyes and hands, ready to learn and grow on the fly. We spent the whole month of May planning and creating program activities for each day – with my fellow intern focusing on creating piano lessons for students, and me working on creating an educational gardening experience for students, with an overall goal of improving the courtyard space of the school.
Not only did my confidence in my own ability to figure situations out on the fly grow, but my confidence in, and ability to facilitate productive and healthy team-work also grew in ways I couldn’t have expected it to. There was little structure to the development and implementation of our project, so my fellow intern and I had to trust each other to accomplish what we each had said we would, and to push each other to step beyond what we were comfortable with, in order to help the program and students succeed. Finally, I grew in the valuing and developing of relationships and community in regards to task completion.
If I had to put it in one sentence, this whole project was a lesson in the synergies and joy of keeping your eyes and hands open. In early Spring 2019, I had approached the head of CRIS Community Connectors to ask about a summer internship that could help the CRIS community. He challenged me to come up with my own idea for a summer project, and I came back a few weeks later with the idea to connect some students from a local school to UNITY Fridge – a vegetable garden located at Waterman Farm created to combat local food deserts. I hoped to create a program that would allow the students to travel to parts of Columbus they might not normally have been to, to spend time on a farm in an outdoor environment, to practice English, to encourage a value of nutrition, and to just have fun! My supervisor was supportive of this program idea, but soon came back to me with a new one that was in synergy with prior relationships between CRIS and Columbus Global Academy.
My soon to be fellow intern had proposed creating piano lessons for students associated with CRIS programming, and my supervisor decided to merge our programs into one big summer program. I changed my plan to focus on the courtyard space of the school, and what the students of the school would want for it. My fellow intern and I went with our supervisor into one of the project-based learning classrooms in early May to present to hear different ideas on what they wanted for their courtyard. The students then used the rest of the school year to work in groups and create their own plans for the courtyard space. At the end of the year, we went in again to hear them present officially.
We then used the rest of the month of May to plan out the program’s schedule, and to find students interested in participating in the program – one of my favorite parts of the program, and a task more difficult than one might traditionally expect. Relationships and relationship integrity are highly important for the multiculturality of CRIS Community Connectors program, so instead of using a method that many schools might traditionally use to find participants for a program such as a sign-up sheet or announcements, we talked to one of Community Connector’s mentees who is a highly dedicated student at Columbus Global Academy, and an active participant in CRIS’s programs. She helped us by finding other students who would be willing and committed to participate in our summer program. In turn, we (the interns) went into their school lunch period to find each student who had indicated a willingness to participate and talked to them to make sure they understood the program requirements and had them fill out necessary paperwork. In this way, this program was highly relational – which is a strong value of mine as well, as someone who grew up outside of the US, in a highly relational culture. It was a growing experience for me to pursue the accomplishment of a task in such a relational environment, and required lots of varied skills in communication.
Finally, we had to implement a lot of flexibility when it came to the actual program. Most things did not go according to how we had planned them, which was something that we had expected, and so we had to make a lot of scheduling, transportation, logistical, and programming decisions on the fly. This was a great experience for me personally, and it helped us focus more on enjoying the experience of getting to know the students who participated in our program.
The skills, relationships, and confidence that I gained from this summer program were invaluable. I understand even better than before how much I personally value relational integrity, especially in professional environments, in a way that is not traditionally culturally American. This has helped me to shape my understanding of the kind of environment I want to work in after I graduate – I absolutely want to work in a field that requires deep cross-cultural communication and community building. Secondly, I have a deeper confidence in my own ability to learn quickly, listen well, and to use flexibility in the work-place. I made decisions, led tasks, and organized people in ways that, before this summer, I didn’t really believe that I could. Most of all, however, it was simply a joy and an honor to work alongside some of Columbus’s new American middle and high school students this summer in this school’s courtyard space. I am glad I got to have a glimpse into each of their lives, and, as I remain with CRIS through the mentorship program, I hope to have a chance to continue to watch how they grow throughout their high school careers.