Name: Yeidaly Mejia
Year: 2019
Major: Undeclared
What’s happening? We’d love to hear how your internship is going.
This summer I am interning at the ACLAMO Family Center in Norristown and the Civic Engagement Office here at Bryn Mawr. The ACLAMO Family Center is a non-profit organization that provides social services and education programs to the Latinx/Hispanic community in Norristown. During the summer, ACLAMO holds a summer program for rising first-nineth graders called Summerbridge. Summerbridge is designed to help the students bridge the gap between the academic years. This summer, I had the amazing opportunity to be the science teacher for the older students (4th-9th graders) on Mondays and Wednesdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the older cohort accompanied by myself and the two other teachers, would head to the Morris Arboretum where they had science lessons. I have been able to gain hands on teaching experience and have grown closer with the students and their families.
As for the Civic Engagement piece, I worked closely with the office and ACLAMO to coordinate a week long program for the ADELANTE high school students. This program ran from July 25th-July 29th. We had a focus in Math and the Connections between Education, Careers, and Jobs. Each day, the students had workshops involving the theme in addition to workshops revolving college access and social issues. I was even able to work with the person who started ADELANTE, Ana Cordova, for the week! This week was extremely rewarding because I got to know all the high school students and saw them grow so much in just a week.
Why I applied to my internship:
As I volunteered with ADELANTE this past year, I fell in love with the program and the ACLAMO organization. In the fall, I will be the ADELANTE Coordinator with Aditi Sriram. I have grown close with the students but wanted to learn more about the organization since I was only there once a week with a select group. I was extremely excited when I heard about this summer opportunity and it felt like a perfect fit considering I want to work with students and college access in the future.
