Intern of the Month: Carolina Avila

Name: Carolina Avila
Hometown: Cedar Hill, Texas
College:  Dallas Baptist University
Major:  Communications Theory and Business
Project Transformation Site: Christ’s Foundry UMC
Hobbies:  Reading leadership books, watching action or romantic movies, Zumba, crafts, baking, and cooking

Why did you want to serve as an intern at Project Transformation?
The opportunities that it provided.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from working with children?
That you have to be cautious and consider how to react in handling different situations.

What is your favorite part of the Project Transformation experience?
The leadership development and the learning experiences at site.

If you could tell one story from your experience at Project Transformation, what story would you tell?
One time, James (Christ’s Foundry Site Coordinator) was speaking about respect.  Two of our kids who are known to cause some trouble opened up and shared a time when James had spoken one-on-one with them about respect.  They both remembered what took place and demonstrated learning from this.  It was a serious and cute moment.

Introducing Our Coordinator of Curriculum!

Welcome to Project Transformation, Elisabeth!

Project Transformation is very excited to announce the newest addition to our staff, Elisabeth Danielsons.  Elisabeth comes to Project Transformation through the US-2 young adult missions program of the United Methodist Church.  Through this program, Elisabeth will be serving Project Transformation for two years as our Coordinator of Curriculum.  She will be working closely with program staff to plan and implement curriculum, assisting interns with facilitating activities, and working on developing assessments to determine the effectiveness of our programs.  She is truly a blessing to our organization!

Elisabeth is maintaining a blog to chronicle her experience as a US-2 missionary.  Here is an excerpt from a recent post on her blog, about building community among the after-school interns.  Feel free to check Elisabeth’s blog often to read about her transition to Dallas, her experience at Project Transformation, and all of the great work that she is doing! Elisabeth’s blog can viewed at http://elisabethdanielsons.wordpress.com/.

“One of my jobs with Project Transformation is to establish monthly dinners for the year-long interns. This is partly because I’m a US-2 and establishing a community is a big part of the US-2 program, but it fits in with Project Transformation because the interns don’t have as large of a community during the after-school program. During the summer program, there are nightly dinners and lots of time for bonding. Of course, with 100 or so interns this might be easier to accomplish. Right now in the after-school program we have around 20 interns who for the most part are in school or have other jobs than just working with the after-school program. So nonetheless, I am determined to  have a dinner for them once a month (food is an incentive, right?). Along with this, the plan is to have a small devotional.

This past Saturday was the first dinner! We had a taco potluck, if you want to call it that. I cooked some meat (WAY too much) and the interns were asked to bring the rest of the supplies. We ended up having 5 interns, 1 boyfriend, and me. Not so shabby for the first dinner!  We ate tacos, and I have to say that they were pretty awesome. We talked, laughed, and had a good time. I also asked what they wanted these to be because they are not about me so much as they are about allowing the interns to build a sense of community.

And this is where I get really excited… instead of doing a Bible study-type devotional, we are going to….. drumroll please….. share stories! Each month one or two interns will volunteer to share their faith stories! How exciting is this?!? I’m really excited to get to know more about the interns and where they came from. During our US-2 training, everyone in the program (including the Global Ministries staff) shared their call to mission/ministry. This was such a neat and sacred time for us to share together. Each of the Mission Interns and US-2′s came from unique places and had an exciting story to tell, and that was my favorite part of the day. So now I’m here, and I’m going to get to listen to more stories!

I’m excited about the bonding, stories, laughter, and maybe some tears that might be shared in the months to come and about building a community in this strange new world called Project Transformation.

That is all for today!

Elisabeth”

Challenges of the First Month

My first month as an intern has officially concluded! It was a month full of new experiences, unforgettable moments, and challenges. One challenge that presented itself everyday throughout the month was during the portion of the day dedicated to reading. Our site has a high percentage of bilingual students who live in households where Spanish is their first language. We are blessed to say that our Site Coordinator and I have the ability to understand most Spanish words and that I have a good Spanish vocabulary. Most of the kids that I worked with preferred reading in Spanish, and because our goal is to help them better their overall reading, we made a few adjustments to better assist them in this transition. Some of these adjustments included purchasing books that were bilingual so that the kids could see the words in their first language and then could become more familiar with the word in English. We have also incorporated bilingual phonics games to give them the opportunity to expand their vocabulary. I cannot help but smile anytime I hear one of these kids pronounce the words correctly and use them within their truthful meaning. Although some obstacles still present themselves with the language barrier, we have seen improvement as the kids practice and learn new English words. We definitely expect more growth and look forward to sharing the progress we will continue to see in their reading! 

Carolina Avila
Christ’s Foundry Intern

Johnny and the Rainbow Kitties

During reading time on Monday, we let the kids come up with names for their reading groups as opposed to just using their grades as names. Our first and second graders work with Mr. Jonathan during reading time. Our one male in that age group is a great reader so he moved up to be with the third and fourth graders which leaves Mr. Jonathan with all of the little girls. He is great with them, and they like him so much some of them have started calling him Jonny.

On Monday, the girls could not decide on a name for their reading group so Jonny decided to lead them to a compromise. They all wanted to be a colorful animal, but which color and which animal was a big debate. Jonathan was finally able to talk them into choosing rainbows as their color since rainbows feature many colors. He also discussed how most of the animals in the debate were large cats so he suggested the Rainbow Cats. Cats did not go over very well with the girls but they soon found common ground on Kitties. So for the rest of the year, the first and second grade reading group (and Mr. Jonathan!) will be known as the Rainbow Kitties.

For those of you out there who are interested, the third and fourth grade group name is the Fairly God Parents (based off of a Nickelodeon TV show) and the fifth and sixth grade group name is The Superiors (not quite sure the thought process behind that one). 

Rachel Luna
Site Coordinator, Chapel Hill UMC

Intern of the Month: Cristian Gomez

Name: Cristian Gomez, former LITE participant
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
College: Eastfield College
Major: Psychology
Project Transformation Site: Casa Linda UMC
Hobbies: Running, writing poetry, gardening, and eating cereal

Why did you want to serve as an intern at Project Transformation?

It’s been a dream of mine to help out in my community ever since I was a kid.  Project Transformation helped me make my dream come true.  I get to interact with so many wonderful kids and fellow interns.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from working with children?

I’ve learned that it takes time and patience to make a lasting impact.  That’s one of the main reasons why I applied for the after-school program.  I have a whole year to make a difference.

What is your favorite part of the Project Transformation experience?

My favorite part is seeing the results, I can’t explain the feeling I get when I see the kids have improved their reading skills and grow as a person.

If you could tell one story from your experience at Project Transformation – what story would you tell?

My favorite memory of the 2012-13 after-school program so far would have to be teaching one of the kids how to play basketball.  Now, every day she tells me that she plays during recess at school.

BOOM!

Super star spellers from Pleasant Mound!

I cannot believe it is the end of September already! This month at Pleasant Mound UMC, our students have become more eager than ever to do daily reading activities. With our new reading enrichment component, our students receive a half-hour every day of learning new reading skills. The reading game our students love playing the most is a spelling game called “BOOM!”

One day, I played this game with the 3^rd and 4^th graders, however I was using words that were on a 5^th and 6^th grade level.  When I told the students I was changing the words, they at first thought the words were going to be too hard. But after some encouragement, we found ourselves having a great time spelling these more difficult words. At the end of the game, I reminded the kids of how proud they should be of themselves for spelling words that were on a 5^th grade level. When I said this, Michelle (3^rd grade) said, “Who knew we were so smart!” This statement was beyond exciting to hear from a student, and made me realize the potential that all of the students in our program have to excel and improve their reading skills over the course of the school year.

Hannah Escalante
Site Coordinator
Pleasant Mound UMC

Introducing our New Interns!

Project Transformation is so excited to welcome all of our year-round interns who will be serving in our after-school programs from September through May.  Our after-school programs began last week, and all of the interns are already doing an AMAZING job.  Our seven full-time interns (six Site Coordinators and one Reading Program Coordinator) would like to introduce themselves to you!  Read below to see what each intern is looking forward to this year, both in their role at Project Transformation and as Dallas residents!

Hannah Escalante
Site Coordinator at Pleasant Mound UMC
College: Olivet Nazarene University; Degree: Youth Ministry
“I am most excited to explore a new city!  I have never had the chance to really live and be in a community like the one we live in here.  I am excited for the multiple opportunities ahead to explore Dallas, like the State Fair and free concert opportunities.  At PT, I am excited about our new reading program and helping all of our kids with their literacy!  Nothing is more exciting than helping kids read and write and reach goals they didn’t know they could reach.”

Rachel Luna
Site Coordinator at Chapel Hill UMC
College:  The University of Tennessee; Degree: Social Work
“I am most excited to build strong life-changing relationships with the kids in the program.  I am excited to explore Dallas and all it has to offer, especially all of the taco places.”

Andrea Gordon
Site Coordinator at Oak Cliff UMC
College:  University of North Texas; Degree: Development & Family Studies
“I am excited to live and be a part of the community we serve at Project Transformation and build up the children we serve.”

Josh Caraway
Site Coordinator at Casa Linda UMC
College: Louisiana State University; Degree:  Mathematics
“I’m pumped to work and bond with my team this year.  They have been wonderful thus far, and I can’t wait to see what great things we can accomplish this year.  One of my missions this year is to find the best taqueria in Dallas.  I’m also determined to beat ‘Super Tennis’ on Whitney’s Super Nintendo.”

Whitney Parson
Site Coordinator at Elmwood UMC
College: Old Dominion; Degree: Communications
“I am looking forward to being in Dallas for another year, so I can continue to build strong bonds with the families, kids, and community I serve and watch them transform our lives as we transform theirs as well.  I am especially excited to be living in Dallas this year because the musical Wicked is coming in the spring, and I will finally get to see it for the first time after attempting (and failing) to go see it for the last 3 years.  It’s going to be an amazing year!”

Hannah Cauley
Reading Program Coordinator
College: Georgia Tech; Degree: International Affairs & Modern Languages (Spanish)
“I am looking forward to getting to work on our reading/literacy program at all 6 of our sites this year.  We are looking to really step up our reading program, and I can’t wait to see how much our kids learn this year!”

James Lawrence
Site Coordinator at Christ’s Foundry UMC
“I am really looking forward to the communities that I am a growing to be a part of.  Christ’s Foundry is an absolute blessing and is truly unique.  I have been incorporated into the people’s lives in a way that is so much more than a normal after-school program coordinator would ever feel.  The love that has been poured out can only be such a small part of the love that will be lived out by the congregation, staff, the kids, and the community.  I am excited for every single part of this next year.”