Introduction:

Hi! My name is Haylie House and I am currently interning at a Nonprofit called

the Martha O’Bryan Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Specifically, we serve about

12,000 youth and adults yearly. We strive to help reduce the burden of poverty in the

East Nashville community. In this specific area, the average household income is

$7,494. To give a little perspective on how low this is, the national poverty threshold for

a house of four is about $24,000. I specifically work with the K-8 department and help

run an afterschool program for students in grades K-4.

Although I work for the K-8 department, there are several other departments

within my organization with the same mission to reduce the burden of poverty in the

area. These departments include the family success network, family and community

services, family preschool, the high school department, and college and career

readiness. The family success network works with families to develop positive parenting

skills and helps parents and kids to learn things like positive time management skills.

The family and community services department runs the food bank and helps to serve

meals to all the families in the East Nashville community. The family preschool program

helps to provide childcare to families that could otherwise not afford it. The high school

program is very similar to my department in that they run an afterschool program for the

highschool students. Lastly, the college and career readiness department provides help

in applying for jobs, colleges, scholarships, fafsa, etc. The organization as a whole is a

great resource for the community it serves.

The success of the organization dates all the way back to 1894. Martha O’Bryan

originally started her mission at the First Presbyterian Church delivering clothing, food,
and furniture to families in need. Over time, her charitable acts transformed into an

entire organization with a mission to help underserved communities in the area. The

Martha O’Bryan center now sits in the middle of a neighborhood called “Cayce Place”,

which is Nashville's oldest and largest public housing development. This housing

development is currently undergoing construction to transform into mixed income

housing. When finished, it will hold 1,100 low-income, 400 workforce, and 1,200 full-

market housing units.

Description of Experiences:

Throughout my term as an intern, I have had several responsibilities. I assist the

Site Coordinator with curriculum formation, lead organized reading lessons, and assist

with after school program implementation such as tutoring, homework assistance, and

service learning initiatives. I also create academic approaches that meet the needs of

specific students and assist the Site Coordinator in entering important data into

SWORPS data systems as well as in excel programs. I attend multiple training sessions

a month on various topics such as implicit bias, recruitment strategies, and CPR. I

attend weekly staff and partner meetings, conduct academic and emotional benchmark

tests, and assist the entire K-8 department in any on-going projects. I've had the

opportunity to learn about the inner workings of running a competitive academic

intervention program and have been given the ability to assume responsibility and

leadership in a variety of activities. I really wish I had gotten the opportunity to lead

more PE based classes, but due to COVID there were too many restrictions against that

type of activity.
The most rewarding part of my internship is definitely the relationship I have built

with the kids in my program. They have not been given the best opportunities in life but I

love getting the chance to help build their confidence as well as their academic abilities.

I have never worked with kids in poverty before, but it is very eye opening to see the

challenges that these kids can overcome. I have helped to teach them but they have

taught me as well. Their perseverance has changed the way I see the inequalities in our

education system.

Although this internship has perks, it also has a few challenges. The biggest

challenge was the fact that me and my coworker did not have a site coordinator for the

majority of the internship. The site coordinator has a lot of experience in the field and

makes sure everything gets done properly. However, my coworker and I were left to

figure things out for ourselves. It became pretty stressful at times because we were

doing things that weren’t in our job description on top of our expected workload. It was

frustrating because our bosses claimed they were hiring someone for several months

and never did. Another challenge to the job was definitely the behavior issues. I knew

the kids weren’t coming from a school system with great structure, but I didn’t realize

how difficult it would be to run a program with 50 kids that don’t follow directions.

However, this has definitely helped me to develop better classroom management skills.

Perception and Evaluation of the Internship:

This internship definitely met my personal expectations. Not only did it help me to

realize exactly what I wanted to do, it also helped me to realize where I want my career

to be as well. They were very open to my ideas and contributions. I actually got to plan
a majority of the summer programming! They also let me do my own thing when

planning the fun part of the afterschool program every day. I had awesome bosses but I

don’t think they were as helpful as they could have been since they didn’t hire a site

coordinator until March. We would also ask them for help sometimes and they weren’t

always able to follow through with what they said they would do. I think the pay is a

huge factor that could have been improved with this internship. Nashville is a very

expensive city to live in and the interns' pay was a very small stipend for the amount of

hours and hard work we put into the job.

Although the internship had its challenges, I would still recommend this internship

to other public health students. It is a great way to learn how nonprofits work and the

impact they have on a community. Nashville is also a super fun place to live and

experience the city life. There is also room for advancement in the company if it is

something that a future intern wants to pursue. I personally would not consider a career

in this internship only because I have decided that I want to pursue a totally different

career in medical sonography. However, this will still look good on my resume and I am

very happy I took part in interning at the Martha O’Bryan Center.

Internship Preparedness:

I honestly didn’t feel like my classes were very applicable to my internship other

than program implementation. I learned about program implementation in several

classes and was able to transfer those skills into my internship when planning a

successful after school program. I was also thankful that we had had a previous lecture

regarding working with underserved kids in a previous class. Although I learned a lot
from the lecture, I still felt least prepared when it came to working with kids in poverty.

This had nothing to do with GCSU, but more lack of experience. I have had a lot of

experience working with kids in summer camps and daycares but they were always in

high income areas so I felt inexperienced in working with this particular group of kids.

One thing that GCSU needs to do is hire more staff to help students find internships. I

was late to the game finding an internship because I was originally planning on doing

mine in the summer, which made it really hard to find one. I didn’t get much help from

my internship advisor because she had so many other students she needed to help as

well.

Internship Performance

Prior to having this internship, I had never worked a typical “9-5” job. This

internship has really helped me to learn better time management skills to make sure I

balance work, social life, sleep, and school. It was a difficult adjustment at first but I

think that I have really gotten the hang of things. When it comes to my job/internship I

always put in my best effort so I am satisfied with my performance on assignments and

projects. I am confident that my superiors would say the same. I would give myself a

9/10 on the quality of my work. I definitely have things I need to improve on but overall I

put my all into everything I did. I think I definitely need to continue working on my

classroom management and leadership skills as I continue with my internship. I am shy,

which sets me back when taking on leadership roles, however, I have definitely seen

improvement in myself since starting this internship.

Personal/Professional Insights/Benefits:
Since getting my internship, I have completely changed what I want to do as my

future career. Prior to this semester, I was hoping to become a PE teacher for

elementary schoolers. As much as I love working with kids, I have realized that this is

not something that I want to pursue for the rest of my life. I am now planning to return to

school in order to receive an associates degree in diagnostic medical sonography. This

will certify me to be able to perform ultrasounds on pregnant women. Since I will have to

take out student loans, I plan to work and save my money for a year prior to starting

back to school. Hopefully, I will begin my new degree in August 2022.

Even though this internship no longer relates to my future goals, I still learned

and grew a lot from it. I have gotten the opportunity to take on leadership roles that were

out of my comfort zone at first. Now that I am almost finished, I don’t think twice about

leading a program and speaking in professional meetings. I am much more confident in

taking charge and voicing my own opinions.

I also got the opportunity to see what it's like to live a “low-income” life. Since this

is only an internship and year of service, I received a small living stipend as

compensation. Since I am considered an Americorps, our living stipend does not

translate to an actual income. Because of this, all the Americorps qualify for food

stamps. Through this experience I was able to see firsthand how difficult it can be to pay

for expenses and the pros and cons behind government assistance. I couldn’t imagine

living with this income and also having children to care for. This experience has really

helped me to understand the difficulties that the low-income population experience.

Nonprofits like the Martha O’Bryan center are vital to the success of these families in
need. Specifically the children I work with need this kind of assistance in order to

succeed in their future education.