A New Chapter, A Familiar Place
Last year when I worked with the Partnership for Appalachian Girls Education I fell in love with the program, the people, and the place. So much so, that I decided to return to North Carolina for another internship with the organization this year. I am very excited to be returning for my second year with the program and see the girls that I made connections with last year, while also meeting new ones! I am incredibly thankful and blessed that I have the chance to grow with PAGE, both on an organization and individual level. Last year I was very enthusiastic about running a literature group, where I read with girls of all ages, ranging from grades 6th-12th, using a variety of modes and methods. We read about home, questioned what that word meant to us, learned about poetry, and created plays and poster projects to demonstrate what we were learning about. One of my favorite “units” that I taught last summer was about media representation in Appalachia. We looked at some of the negative flack that the region has received on television shows and on the radio and then created our own digital media projects where the girls more accurately portrayed what their home meant to them.
The program directors Maia and Deborah noticed my hard work and excitement around the whole program and invited me to return this year. Now, I am not going to be teaching literature so much as facilitating the organization and logistics of teaching it. Officially, my title is Literature Group and Intern Coordinator, which is just a fancy way of saying that I will be around to help out with any tasks that need to be completed in relation to the literature groups! One way that I have already started doing this work is meeting with all of the interns individually to discuss what books they would like to read with their reading groups. Different from last year, during the two-week session the students will be reading one whole novel. The books that have been chosen for the first session include; ‘Bridge to Terabithia, ‘American Born Chinese’, and Magic Treehouse book. I am happy that I am able to utilize my knowledge of literature and middle grades education, especially as I work in the literature coordinating role.
Upon arriving in Mars Hill, the first thing that the rest of the interns and I did was explore the local sights. Since I also lived here last summer, I was able to show them some of the best places, like the coffee shop shown above. After a productive weekend of settling in, we had our first training day on Monday, where we had a deep dive into the literature program. I was joined by last year’s literature coordinator Langely and together we co-led the training session for the day. One of the most valuable things that I have benefited from as an educator in training has been scenarios. This is an approach that I integrated into this training as well. I presented the interns with several possible scenarios that could happen in their literature groups including:
- A girl comes back halfway through the week and has read the entire book even though everyone else is still on chapter one.
- There is a student who reads far below their grade level and needs extra support with reading and comprehension.
The practices that I have learned as a Berea College Education major have benefited me well in consulting these prospective occurrences as I have a wealth of approaches to choose from. One of these that we talked about in the training was how to do a think-aloud.
The rest of the week was spent learning about the 2 other sessions that will be provided to the girls over the course of the first two weeks. The first is a photo diary and the second, is digital storytelling. The most intensive part of the training has been digital storytelling. The Story Center, which is run out of Berkley University in California has been doing the training with us. In addition to learning how to run the digital side of things, in preparing to work with the young students, interns have also created their own digital stories. Going through the process ourselves, rather than just learning about the steps to telling a story has been valuable. It is an incredibly raw experience to create and tell a moment of our lives in a story. I will be one of the interns who is working specifically on the digital storytelling piece and I am so very excited to not only do it with the PAGE students but also bring the skills that I learn back to student teaching next year as well.
Even though this week was filled with a lot of hard work, we all made sure to leave time in the evenings for meals!
However, on Thursday as we were nearing the end of the first training week I woke up feeling very sick. At first I figured that it was just allergies and took some medicine and went about my day. After taking the medicine I felt a little better but as the day went on I started to feel worse. I had a headache, my throat was sore, and I felt like throwing up. It didn’t cross my mind that it could possibly be Covid until I texted one of my friends back home and she suggested that I get tested, especially since so many Berea College students were testing positive on the various trips and internships that were going on. ‘Alright’ I promised, I would as soon as the training day was over. About an hour before the day was set to end though, I started shivering in the very hot room we were in and the leader of the session for the day asked me if I needed to go home. I said yes, and drove to the nearby drugstore to get a Covid test.
The next few days were spent eating a lot of soup and sleeping. After about 72 hours I didn’t have a fever anymore and am still recovering. The program has not told me how long that I will need to stay in isolation for and it may be different that national guidelines since we work with so many folks who are at risk if they catch the virus. Hopefully I will be out and about soon!
