Main Contribution

I had a very big project about a year ago during Christmas time. Every week I make videos that my bosses take during classes showing what the students do throughout the week. Sometimes teachers are in little bits of the video, so for our Christmas party I took all of the videos from the past years and made a video of the teachers. It was very difficult and time consuming but it was a really great video and lots of fun.
At work I had a few crying kids, which I am trying to learn to deal with. I don't really know how to comfort, especially when I can tell they're crying to get me to give them something. I sent one student to the office and I tried to work out a fight between two kids. I really don't get why kids fight so much, there really isn't anything to fight about. I really want to be a child therapist so I should learn how to deal with this a little better.

Expectations

This internship is definitely meeting my expectations. I have worked here for a year now and I know what to expect. I have a very good job, however, it does take a lot out of me. I come home from work exhausted and ready for shower. Kids are quite gross, but I think it beats having a desk job. I'm the type of person who really can't stand being bored, and I get bored very easily. My work is definitely not boring. I have learned a lot about video editing while working here which is really cool and I wasn't expecting to do this when I got the job.
At work we had recital which is always really fun. I normally have small groups of 6 kids for 30 minutes and we rotate 4 times. In the later afternoon we have 2 groups of 12 kids, but on fridays during the last hour I have all 24 kids for an hour. This is quite a challenge, I normally do story time but even that can be hard. I read them stories as they get called out to practice, but managing that many kids takes a lot of patience. They want to play with their toys, talk, walk around, and I am really trying to get them to listen. Depending on the group of kids it can go really well or really terribly, today was pretty good.

Classroom Experiences

My classroom experiences were somewhat helpful, but I think I learned a lot more volunteering in my mom's first grade classroom. I spent 2 summers helping her, and working with the kids before I got my job at MusArt. These lessons were very valuable, I learned how to manage kids and what motivates them/ how to help them. My teachers have taught me some of this too, but high school students and young children are very different.
At work I did a really interesting craft where we tried to make paper snowflake things with tissue paper and it was a huge mess. I hate messes and I really struggled to teach rather than clean. I find that I have this issue a lot.

First day of internship/ Work atmosphere

My first day of my internship was quite a normal day of work for me. I started working at MusArt the summer after my sophomore year, and I'm going to continue working there for a long time. I thought about getting another internship, but I really didn't want to leave MusArt. The place has really become a second home to me and today I'm going to talk about my work atmosphere. I have a great boss, and everyone is like family. However, I can't call it a totally relaxed environment, because we work with children. I love my co-workers, but the kids make things pretty chaotic. The dress code is totally relaxed, when you're finger painting or playing tag you shouldn't really be wearing a pencil skirt and heels. It's a very friendly environment and that is probably my favorite part about my job.

My First Day of Work

Today I'm going to write about my first day of work. It isn't actually the first day of my internship, but I will talk about that next.  My first day of work I was super nervous and I began team teaching with Ben, a past AOIT intern. Now I'm going to explain what Camp MusArt is and what I do there. This is a year round track out camp, like a summer camp, but we are also open for year round schools. Each week we get a new group of kids, some do stay for their entire track out (which is about 3 weeks). And we do crafts, art, music, movement, all kinds of stuff with them. I mainly teach crafts, but I also do story time every week, I try do some movement classes, I've gardened, I do aftercare where we play outside and play games, and I edit videos every week. I mostly teach classes alone, but sometimes I team teach with new interns. My first day I team taught with Ben, which was quite scary. Most of the interns teach a musical instrument and they pull 1 kid from the group of 6. This leaves the art teachers with all of the other kids which was really frightening. It ended up being really fun, I had a lot of past experience with kids and I love my job.