An Update on My Internship (10)

My internship is shadowing a team of speech pathologists at Sharon Elementary. I have interned for about ten weeks now, and I have completely fallen in love with the children and the staff that I work with every day. Everyone strives to help me succeed in my mentorship, and they allow me to experience everything they through on regular basis. At the beginning of my internship, I was unsure if I was going to like being around different ages of kids. But, after about 2 days I loved seeing the variety of personalities in each speech therapy class I shadowed. I also felt very out of place on the first day. The people around me seemed to know everything, and I felt like I knew nothing in comparison. They all seemed calm and not fazed by wacky situations, like a little girl throwing up, someone sneezing in your face, or any state of emergency.

The amount of love spread throughout my internship really surprised me. It seemed like every teacher loves their job. They are always there for their students and are always supporting them through their rough patches. I was also taken aback about the many uses of the speech therapists throughout the school system. For example, at Sharon Elementary, there is a special needs Pre-K class with many of the children in the class having autism. Everyday my mentor and I walk down to that class and taught the students how to communicate through certain hand gestures or making certain noises that would allow us to know if they needed something. My mentor also worked on certain motor skills, like sitting in a chair for more than 5 minutes or handwriting, with these children. It fascinated me that speech therapists have such an impact on their students.

I believe the one thing I can improve on is being comfortable in any circumstance. I must learn to break out of comfort zone and really understand what this internship has in store for me. Learning the ropes of the program and understanding how to handle every situation will allow myself to become more confident in my abilities and add to my experiences as an intern. There are so many ways I can take this internship, and my plan for the next 9 weeks is to ask questions and to take more notes on details that I have may have missed at the beginning of the school year. This internship offers me so many opportunities to understand what my future will be like in a profession like this one.