Vermont Institute on the Caribbean
Melissa Espert, 2009
In the month of January, I did an internship for the non for profit organization, Vermont Institute on the Caribbean (VIC). On the fifth of January, I traveled to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic and returned to the United States on the 31st of January. The specific project that I worked on is called the Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Kids Program. This program exists to help empower the community, parents, schools and children in having a self-sufficient healthy neighborhood and personal well-being. During the month, I assisted Marisha Kazeniac, the executive director of VIC, in implementing smaller community-based projects with the students and parents at two schools (Los Dominguez and Gregorio Luperon). I assisted a few of the teachers (who were active members in the program) in classroom instruction and activities pertaining to the environment and sustainability. I planned additional activities and worked with a group of students; I specifically helped them to become more aware of their surroundings and gave them the opportunity to create ideas on how one (or a group of young people) can change the neighborhood for the better. I started the first steps of communication with some sister elementary schools in Burlington. The students in Vermont were also apart of the Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Kids program. Lastly, I was to serve as a translator in a few meetings.
In this internship, I think that I performed well. I was very effective with the kids and with setting up the first stages of pen-pal communication with the schools in Vermont. Once I understood my responsibilities, I tried to break it down as much as possible, in order to work with the students. I especially think that I worked really well with the students. The concept of school and learning is not the same in the Dominican Republic compared to the USA. There is a major lack of structure, order, progressiveness, and the need to learn. The priorities of the students are completely the opposite in relation to students in the States. In the Dominican Republic, the students arrive late to school, walk around the school complex, constantly talk to their friends and play sports. Maybe, they would listen to one word the teacher says. For a large percentage of students, there is no passion to learn anything and do academic work. The students do not have any notion of being quiet, listening, studying and of discipline. Even the select group of students had problems with discipline, but it was a smaller percentage. Despite all of this, I was able to get them to learn about the environment, participate, become really interested in wanting to know more, write report cards about ideal neighborhoods and countries, become observant and think, and then write reflections about their experiences and what they discussed. I was not a master at Spanish, but I managed to communicate with them and fulfill the majority of the requirements. The students and I learned from each other. The most important accomplishment was that the students wanted to continue to create discussions, to do activities relevant to the environment, to learn more about being advocates, and to create change for themselves, their family and their community. Although, I did not get a chance to finish a mural and hand out the report cards to each class at that specific time, I mostly did what was required of me and fully enjoyed my experience there.
In the Dominican Republic, I learned that I definitely can not be a teacher because I do not have the endless amount of patience that others have in the field of education. But, this internship confirmed that I can be a life-changing mentor to people who share the same culture and background with me. I learned that I don’t like giving students the answer because they are capable of teaching themselves. I am only a vessel that they use to get to the answer, but I do not give them anything except time, a listening ear and an open mind. As mentioned above, I noticed that the school system is very different from the States. And even though there are many problems with the school system here, it made me appreciate structure, discipline and order from the few pivotal teachers in my life.
Overall, I loved this internship. And I miss the students there. I wish I had more time to work with them. Due to many holidays, faculty/staff school meetings and the weather, there was no school, so I missed some valuable time with them. This is a great program that will be successful in a couple of years. Because it is a new program and just getting started, it needs more time and organization to develop into a grander program, but it is definitely going in the right direction. I hope to visit the schools, the students and the teachers sometime in the near future because this experience definitely left an imprint on me.
Contact the Career Services Office for more information on this internship.