Bell Middle School Internship
I will be interning with Ramona Garcia at Bell Middle School. I will be shadowing a middle school counselor and possibly design a student safe space. I understand how important a safe and open space is for any student and their success.
I am so excited to see the different types of counseling experiences are available to me. I find that it is very important to promote brain health support at a young age.
I am so excited to see the different types of counseling experiences are available to me. I find that it is very important to promote brain health support at a young age.
Photo Essay
The first day of internship, Jamarai and I were very determined and fueled to make an impact at our internship site. We arrived at our internship site at 7:45 and we had went into the library to get our ID’s. We knew we had a lot of potential to leave a great impression on our mentors, students, and staff teachers.
After completing the lists including the students and the reasoning of why they aren't walking, we had to use this sheet to send out to their families. We did this within the first week of internship so it would give the student and family to fulfill the promotion requirements
At this point in the process of our overall job of organizing the students eligible for promotion. I was updating the library list of missing books from each student, this list was on a spreadsheet along with the F’s, U’s, Incidents and owed books of students. I referenced back to this list multiple times through the month. As well as updated it with the documents that I was receiving from staff.
I had created invites for the students that would be invited to the award ceremony, The award ceremony consisted of awards created for students by teachers. In a staff meeting my mentor announced to the staff the impact of receiving an award can have on a student and their outlook on themselves. Therefor, this encouraged many teachers to create and invite students and families to the award ceremony.
All of the invites of students receiving presidential gold and presidential silver awards as well as academic and citizenship awards needed to organized by grade originally. These awards needed to be delivered to the students 6th period classes. Therefore, I had organized the invites by class numbers and their location on campus.
At my site visit with Ms. Nuvia, Ms. Sara, and my mentors we discussed some honest feedback of the work we have done at the internship. This feedback included all of the skills that I had been struggling with throughout this specific year, time management, deadlines, and finding a priority balance. I believe this was a very beneficial conversation for my growth throughout this month. This conversation allowed me to thrive at my internship and master very useful skills that I can use in the future. After the meeting my internship partner and I created a schedule for us to follow to hopefully help us improve our time management. We referenced back to this many times throughout the rest of the month.
This was the beginning process of the design process of the college wall in the counseling center. I originally wanted to figure out what college flags I wanted to use, what information I wanted to provide for each one, and what placements I wanted.
On the college wall that I had designed, I used the college flags in the counseling center to give basic goal oriented information about a variety of colleges. All of these colleges ranged in acceptance rate, location, gender ratio, and cost. I believe that evoking thought for students in Middle School will be very beneficial to the mindset and their overall opinion of college and the road of their future.
The counseling center at Bell Middle School was where I had spent almost all of my time at, throughout the month of May. I watch all different types of students walking through the doors. I felt as though there needed to be more of an impactful environment for the students. Often times, there are students working in the counseling center, therefor I believe this was the perfect space to incorporate this information for them to grasp. This was the final wall.
One of the last assignments one of the mentors had me do was organize many slips. I organized these sleeps by teacher name. The slips were for each student that would attend the award ceremony. They would allow the students to leave class and attend the ceremony.
After the weeks of organizing the awards, Jamarai and I had the chance to attend the award ceremony. It was very satisfying to see the students appreciate the awards and appreciate the teachers for the given awards. I really hope the the students are impacted and are able to see their accomplishments for what they are, a celebration.