Internships: Wikimedia
Ahome stay in Mexico, immunology research, behind the scenes at Sephora. What do these have in common? They are all examples of internships Nueva students did last summer. Twelfth grader Loreen R. was one of those students.
Loreen interned at the Wikimedia headquarters in San Francisco. Wikimedia is a non-profit organization that hosts websites like Wikipedia. As a member of the Community Engagement department, she helped a close-knit team of supervisors with the first-ever global education campaign called the Wikimedia Education Program. The program’s goal is to help teachers come up lesson plans that make teaching and assessing students more engaging. While at Wikimedia, Loreen also constructed her own lesson plan.
As preliminary research, Loreen interviewed various program leaders who were helping teachers everywhere from Ecuador to the Czech Republic. During her interviews, Loreen noted how the leaders always used collective pronouns like “we” and “us” to describe their work. Even though they were responsible for different countries, they were unified by a shared goal to make learning more engaging.
Loreen sees many connections between Wikimedia and Nueva. While she was interning, she called all of her co-workers by their first names much like Nueva students refer to teachers by their first names. Wikimedia also hosts appreciation circles. Even the ambiance at Wikimedia is like that of Nueva – “quirky and charismatic,” as Loreen put it. There are bubble chairs, colorful nooks where workers can put puzzles together, a popcorn machine, and a toy tiger. Loreen is so grateful to have been a part of such a caring community and to have participated in such a groundbreaking campaign.
As a member of the Community Engagement department, she helped a close-knit team of supervisors with the first-ever global education campaign called the Wikimedia Education Program.
