I whole-heartedly believe that I achieved the competencies and personal objectives I set for myself.  I think the reason I was successful in achieving these is due, in part, to my reflections. They helped me keep in mind everything I had written in my learning plan. I also owe my success to the fact that many of these competencies and objectives are constantly being evaluated and improved by myself, my supervisor, and the training team. Working with children from diverse backgrounds means there are certain standards that I want and must adhere to. It is my job to make them feel welcomed and cared for while they are in my class. My supervisor and the training team always try to keep us instructors up to date on the best ways to do this. The objective I am proudest of achieving is: demonstrating to my students that STEM is fun and cool by bringing my enthusiasm and understanding every day. As a kid I was sometimes made fun of for being a “nerd”, but I have embraced all the things I enjoy and use it as a way to show students that all interests are welcome. I do this in many ways including talking about my interests in Disney and Pokemon, showing my enthusiasm for every project we build, and praising students for all their awesome accomplishments.

Like the reflections, I think the process of tracking my progress towards achieving my objectives and competencies over time was useful. In fact, they seemed to go hand in hand. The first article by Sweitzer and King in The Successful Internship titled “Internship Essentials” goes over the importance of both tools. The reflections helped cover the day-to-day of the internship. The competencies and objectives were meant to track our progress over time. For me it seemed natural that the reflections would play a role in the evaluation of the objectives and competencies. As a result, I used them from the start as an indicator tool. The two assignments became dependent on each other, and as time went on, it became more natural for me to give more thought to what I was doing and actively learn from my internship.

Other than my normal teaching duties, I made some extra contributions to my internship site over the course of the semester. The summer camp season is quickly approaching, and my supervisor needed help with marketing and recruitment. There is a lot to do in a short amount of time. She asked me if I would be willing to help her. I recognized this as an opportunity to make some extra hours, but also as an opportunity to challenge myself. So far, she has only had me do some research on places we could market our camps and on colleges we could recruit some summer assistants. However, this is an ongoing project and I look forward to helping her with the next step. This situation helped me realize that part of my leadership style is to be adaptable and open to new ideas. I believe that mostly aligns with the culture of Play-Well TEKnologies, because the very nature of working with kids involves both qualities. Kids can be unpredictable and there are many factors that can cause me to change my lesson or even my approach for a certain group of students. I enjoy it and I was glad to see that particular trait in my leadership still applied to a situation outside of my classrooms.

This is one of my favorite projects to teach my students, it's called Battletracks. It is a great example of how cool STEM can be, since it integrates different types of Lego and Engineering concepts. I use this project as an opportunity to both show off STEM and my personal "nerdiness".

Marketing Info for Summer Camps 2018 by Kaylynn on Scribd

This is the marketing research information that I compiled for my supervisor. This project challenged me in ways that my normal job description does not.

Completed Learning Plan by Kaylynn on Scribd

This is my completed Learning Plan. It includes my intial goals and competancies, as well as the mid-semester review of them.