I am a bit mad because I finished this last week and when I tried to reopen it, word is like “sorry your file is corrupt” so now I need to restart this from scratch. So here we go.
Part 2, my SGC reflection paper.
So I worked at the Howard County Public Library Systems, specifically in the Hi-Tech division. That division is part of the STEM initiative. Essentially, I worked as a STEM tutor, and taught middle-high Hoco students in a wide range of topics. See my resume for more details.
I discovered this site through the James Clark subscription email links for potential jobs. I have absolutely no idea how I got subscribed, but it was totally worth it, as I got a nice job out of it.
This job was perfect for me because it had great pay, great commute, and great coworkers. In fact, two of my coworkers are also in the SGC program, so it was really need to talk about classes with them and the others. Additionally, as a Civil Environmental Engineering major, I found it quite difficult in finding a CEE related internship that would accept me, so having this teaching job really added to my curriculum.
Some more details about the hitech: it was founded as a way to provide the lower classes of Howard County a chance to gain some free, public education. While hitech classes are year round, during the summer and winter break, they need contractors like me as additional hands for hire.
The email that I discovered the job contained the usual “hi friend, attached is a flyer for the hitech program I am coordinating. Please feel free to pass this around,” along with the flyer as an attachment. Before interviewing, I called the supervisor, Betsy, whose number was posted on the flyer, some technical questions.
My advice for SGC scholars is to find reach jobs, and then maybe exciting programs that Holtz and Merc mentioned. Like, in the directions of this essay, some example practicum sites were “working as a docent in a museum zoo,” or “preparing fossils and artifacts in a museum,” or even volunteering at a zoo. My job gave me really easy cash, so I was content with what I got.
Tasks I performed were pretty much what it sounds like. The structure of a curriculum went like this: The parents register their kids through the hcls website. On Monday, the kids line up to the registration desk and go to their classes. This is the first year that the hitech program (which started about 3 years ago), decided to branch to multiple branches. It is based in Savage, but Betsy was especially daring to set up other classes simultaneously at Elkridge and Central.
In the savage branch, there could be as many as 4 classes at once, while the other branches would have 1-3 classes. These classes last 90 minutes, and in total there would be at most 4 series of classes. One before lunch, and three afterwards. The curriculum lasts a week; on monday the kids are first introduced to concepts, and then on friday, they leave, finished and fulfilled.
What did I learn about science? Not much, since I am a college student and I’m teaching middle-high school STEM stuff like bridges, biology, and coding. I guess I learned the science of managing classrooms. Oh, the class sizes were based on the classroom size: 8-25. Ideally, there would be 2 STEM instructors per class, but sometimes it would be 1 if vacation.
Beyond science, I learned hot to transmute science to society. I got to meet a lot of new faces from many backgrounds of Howard County.
I enjoyed working at HCLS’s hitech immensely, but I do not believe I will be working there again. It was such a fun and easy job with great pay, but I need to look more into internships and job related to my CEE major.