HGSE opens so many doors, including the opportunity to intern at a variety of organizations. In this blog post, students share their internship experience and how it has shaped their time at HGSE.
Jenny Portillo
Tell us about your internship.
I am an equity intern with MAEC, Inc. (formerly the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium). MAEC works with State and Local Education Agencies, as well as community organizations in making schools more equitable for all students. As an intern, I have gotten to develop family engagement resources focused on supporting English Learners, help revise the organization’s Equity Audit tool, and help gather data on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color.
How did you find out about this opportunity?
I found out about this opportunity through the Applied Learning Expo hosted by the Career Services Office at the start of the fall semester. I’ve gotten to work with MAEC, throughout the full academic year.
How has your internship added to your HGSE experience and tie into your career aspirations?
My internship ties into my career aspirations because it has given me exposure to systems-level educational equity work that I hope to do in the future within a state or local education agency.
Maria Haqqani
Tell us about your internship.
My internship is an independent, self-initiated research project wherein I seek to explore Pakistani teachers’ and students’ experiences of teaching/studying Western literature in Pakistan. This entails that I conduct semi-structured interviews of teachers and students of English literature in Pakistan as well as peruse relevant readings to both inform and expand upon my research.
How did you find out about this opportunity?
The emails sent by HGSE during the enrollment season in the beginning of the academic year highlighted the Field Experience course, telling us to reach out if we desired more detail. I had been pining to conduct research in the above mentioned topic since a couple of years and needed somebody to supervise me. Luckily, a professor was very excited about my project and happily took me on.
How has your internship added to your HGSE experience and tie into your career aspirations?
My fieldwork added another layer of richness to my HGSE experience. I learned how to structure my research project, how to draft and revise semi-structured interview questionnaires, how to conduct productive and insightful interviews, and how to think, reflect, and report on the findings.
As a literature teacher in Pakistan, I hope to use my findings to inform my curricula and to engage in conversations with teachers about the selection of English literature texts for high school students in Pakistan. Moreover, this training in conducting research will prove useful when I embark upon other research projects in the future.
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