A weekly inside look at the unique faces and personalities that make up The College of Wooster community.
This past summer you did an internship with Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth in Seattle. What was that experience like for you?
It was actually my second internship of the summer, so it was a really short turnaround, but with Johns Hopkins, they have this thing called the Center for Talented Youth, which is a nationwide program. Basically, it’s the sort of summer camp where kids [ages] 12-15 can go take a crash course of a class that’s a really intensive kind of thing.
For example, the kids have to take the S.A.T. to get in the camp, so it’s a really academically inclined organization. And for three weeks, I was able to be a teacher’s assistant for a logic and philosophy course, so basically what that means is that I was able to teach a lot of the evening sessions for the students. We did a lot of examples and practices for logic and throughout the day, the instructor, who was usually a graduate student, would teach lessons, and I would help out with those as well.
This was like a three week thing, and it was a paid internship, which was awesome, and I was able to live in Seattle for three weeks during this time.
What was it like to teach philosophy to seventh through tenth graders?
It was really cool actually, because I thought that philosophy would really stress these kids out, but they loved it, which was surprising. And specifically with logic, I think logic is hard to get into because it’s really abstract, and it’s really principle oriented, but we tried to do things in a way that was good for the kids, so we did a lot of examples and games — things like that. And we played logic jeopardy, just trying to make it fun for the kids, which also kind of made logic fun for me, which was really good.
How has this experience shaped your experience as both a student and as a person?
I think it’s kind of given me a different perspective of education because I’m so used to being the student. Being in the teacher position with kids who are significantly younger than me made me think deeply about how I need to explain these concepts to them and how important what I’m saying is to them, because they take my word to be true.
It really made me think deeply about the words I’m saying and the kind of connotation that they have, and how the kids can take it. And I think it’s shaped me, it’s sort of revitalized my love for philosophy and revitalized my love for education, because both of these things have a huge impact on every individual who interacts with them.
What else are you involved in on campus?
Currently I am a senior peer mentor with A.P.E.X. a writing consultant at the Writing Center, a part of the Freedom of Expression and Inquiry Taskforce, part of the Education Assessment Committee and a part of Queer People of Color.
Interview by Zoe Covey, a Features Editor for the Voice (Photo courtesy Mylo Parker-Emerson).