My Student Experience: College of Education Students Give Back to Their Communities Through Summer Internship Program

This past summer, a group of College of Education students had the opportunity to give back to their communities through the College of Education Summer Internship Program, a competitive five-week program created in memory of Chantal Warfield, a May 2019 graduate who died in a car accident in October 2019.

Students who participate in this program receive financial support to serve as an intern at an organization that supports education in a high-needs community 

Here are some of the internships College of Education students completed over the summer. 

Molly Sue Smith

Molly Sue Smith, a Park Scholar who is double majoring in applied education studies with a learning design and technology concentration and social work, chose to intern with two different organizations, Moore County Schools STEM Camp and Tambra Place, each of which she knew was important to the fabric of education in her community. 

Smith attended the STEM Camp as a middle schooler and volunteered there in high school, which is what inspired her to return as an intern. 

At Moore County’s Elise Middle School, Smith worked in an engineering classroom, where she helped students construct gliders out of cardboard, hot glue, paper and rubber bands, and a geology classroom, where, among other lessons, she taught students about the three types of rocks — igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic — and helped them create their own baking soda and vinegar volcanoes. 

For Smith, the internship was not only a chance to expose more students to the world of STEM, but it was also an opportunity to serve as a role model to the students in her home county.

“That representation is really important to me,” Smith said. 

Smith’s second internship was with Tambra Place, an organization that provides a safe, social learning environment for young people facing housing insecurity. Smith first learned about the program after it provided support to one of her friends during high school. 

During the internship, Smith assisted with collecting donations, sat in on meetings, and also helped a resident move into the transitional home and register for community college classes. Throughout, she worked closely with the program’s leader, Tambra Chamberlain, who provided Smith with a window into what a career at the intersection of social work and education might look like. 

“It really showed me that a role in an education system can kind of be built to you and what your community might need,” Smith said. 

Mary Ledford

Mary Ledford, a middle grades English language arts and social studies education major and Transformational Scholar, returned home to Cumberland County and completed her summer internship through the school district’s Read to Achieve program, which provides literacy instruction to K-3 students who do not yet demonstrate reading proficiency. 

“I enjoyed connecting with teachers within my county and working with small groups of students,” Ledford said. “The teachers were incredibly kind and gracious, offering advice and fully explaining both the curriculum of the program and how to better assist students individually by identifying their needs.”

In her first week, Ledford worked with Cumberland County Schools’ central office and ESL office to prepare materials for each one of the satellite schools hosting a reading camp. Then, in the following weeks, she served as an observer and teaching assistant. Ledford helped students with guided reading and spelling corrections, while also providing one-on-one support with phonetics. In her last week, she was placed with an ESL language camp, where she helped students learn sentence structure, as well as United States iconography. 

“This experience benefitted me as an educator by helping me understand the process of learning and developing literacy skills,” Ledford said. “I now feel more confident and knowledgeable about literacy and how to support low-performing students than I did before.”

Nicholas Klein

Nicholas Klein, a middle grades English language arts and social studies education major, completed his summer internship with Communities In Schools of Cape Fear, specifically its Freedom School, which is a six-week summer literacy program open to rising third through eighth graders in the New Hanover County School District. 

Klein assisted with breakfast duty, supervised morning motivational activities and assisted the school’s teachers with reading curriculum and other activities. 

“Not only did this experience push me out of my comfort zone, but it solidified my desire to be a teacher,” Klein said.  “Seeing the effort and improvement of the scholars reaffirmed my decision to pursue a career in education.”

Klein especially enjoyed the last two weeks of his internship, which he spent in the same classroom and where he was able to forge strong connections with the students. 

“Seeing their growth in such a short period was incredible,” Klein said. “The most rewarding moment of my internship was when a scholar from this class wrote me a letter thanking me for helping him out this summer and said I was his favorite male teacher he had ever had.”

Dariana DeLeon, a mathematics education major and Transformational Scholar, also participated in the NC State College of Education’s Summer Internship Program this year.