My Internship

This past school year I did an internship at Springville Junior High as part of the requirements for my graduate program (I had to complete 600 hours).  I had the opportunity to work with some amazing people and learned a lot along the way.  It was challenging yet very rewarding.  I split the 9th grade with my supervisor, so I was in charge of last names A-K. I looked forward to going every day and I was sad to see it end (although I was so excited to be done!).  The counselors I got to work with were amazing and taught me so much.  I now hope to find a part-time counseling job where I can actually get paid to do what I love!

During my time there I did a few different projects.  I mentioned in THIS blog post a food drive I organized back in December that was awesome (it's at the very end of the post).  I decided to organize another service project where students could come and participate.  I went around to different establishments in the community to get donations for our service project.  I was surprised at how many people told me no but so happy when I did get a couple of places to say yes.  Big thanks to Reams, Corn Wagon Quilt Shop and Smile Center of Utah for donating items to our service project!

The flyer I made and put up around the school:

We had four different stations for students to work at....the first one was writing uplifting notes to soldiers through Operation Gratitude.  The students wrote notes just telling the soldiers how grateful we are for their service and to keep up the good work.  Then we mailed all of them to the OG headquarters in California and they dispersed the notes we wrote.  The second station was putting together "bedtime bags" for kids in shelters.  The bag contained a book, a blanket, a toothbrush/toothpaste, and a stuffed animal.  The third station was making baby hats out of yarn and tying baby blankets, and the last station was putting together hygiene kits.

I made some posters that the kids all signed saying thank you and then developed some pictures from the service project and taped them on there. :)

We had a great turnout!  We got about 30-35 kids to come help

We ended up putting together 15 bedtime bags and 50 hygiene kits!  I don't even know how many notes/letters to soldiers we ended up doing, but there were a lot!

Something else I did during my internship was design this board to help promote college and career readiness, which is a big push that the Utah State Office of Education is making this year.  My office was just off a game room that we had open for students each day between 3rd and 4th period (during our flex time).  There was this big empty board in that room that needed some color so I dreamed up this board and went to work.  I thought it turned out pretty cute! :)

Here's some pics from when I worked on it at home

Another activity I organized was a Mental Health Awareness week.  May is National Mental Health Awareness month so I thought it would be neat to spend a week educating students about the importance of mental health and reducing the stigma attached to mental illness.  Our feeder school, Springville High, had just had a suicide a couple of weeks before this, and a lot of our students were affected by the loss, so I thought it would be an appropriate time to do it.

We had our HOPE Squad members come and help make posters, cut ribbons, and sit at the table each day. (HOPE Squad is a suicide prevention group that our school has, its made up of about 30 students in the school who watch out for other students and make referrals to the counselors if they hear of any students who are struggling.  They are awesome!).

Each day at lunch we had different activities for students to participate in.  I thought it would be cool to have someone come teach yoga to the students at lunch, so I put it out on facebook and sure enough one of my friends knew someone who was willing to come do it for free.  It was awesome!  That was also the day we passed out green ribbons (the official mental health awareness "color") for students to wear throughout the week.

We also had different mental health related handouts on the table for students to take if they wanted.

So the week that I was graduating, the sweet ladies at my internship threw me a little surprise graduation party.  It was so sweet!

I am so lucky to have had such a great experience for my internship.  I was sad to say goodbye to these ladies but excited to see what the future holds for me! :)