Christina Chavarria ’20

The Partners Program, Oakland, CA

For six weeks this summer, I interned with The Partners Program, hosted by The College Preparatory School in Oakland, Calif. The Partners Program states that its mission is to “provide transformative programs that bolster academic achievement and improve access to educational opportunities and resources for hard-working, underserved Oakland public middle school students.” Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area my entire life, and having benefitted from programs like The Partners Program, I was really excited about the idea of giving back to my community.

My work was split into two different parts: time I spent working with other program faculty members, and time I spent working with the scholars in the program. The program faculty members included five other college interns like myself, eighteen high school interns, teachers, and the two program directors. The scholars were rising seventh, eighth, and ninth graders primarily from the Oakland Unified School District, though the program also pulled students from a few other surrounding school districts. While I had originally hoped to spend the majority of my time working with the scholars, the work I completed was split pretty evenly between working with other program faculty members and with scholars.

I spent more time than I had initially thought planning and working with the other program faculty members, and conducting a lot of “behind-the-scenes” work that made the program run smoothly. While this was not what I had originally envisioned myself doing, the experience was still incredibly useful in terms of understanding the type of work that goes into running a non-profit organization. As someone who had participated in programs like The Partners Program for much of my life, I had never taken the time to reflect on everything that goes into running a successful program. For example, in addition to serving as a teaching assistant and working directly with scholars, I was the head of the Celebration Committee, which consisted of six high school interns and another college intern. I led the group in designing and creating a yearbook, as well as planning the entirety of the final graduation celebration. In order to reach these two end goals, we had to divide the work into several smaller tasks. For example, creating the yearbook consisted of building several sections from scratch by using Adobe InDesign, so I assigned different sections to different team members and designated deadlines so we could effectively complete the work.

The process of leading this team was both exciting and challenging; and I did so by creating deadlines and delegating tasks so that we completed everything on time. I was working with people that were both older and younger than me and therefore had to effectively communicate with all types of people. Additionally, I was serving as a direct mentor to three high school interns, and learned a lot about playing the role of a “warm demander.” This was a term we used often in the program—a “warm demander” stays positive and encouraging while continuing to push scholars or team members to challenge themselves. Through the work I completed with fellow faculty members, I was able to further develop my skills of collaboration, effective communication, teamwork, and leadership.

The work I completed with the scholars directly was incredibly fulfilling as well. I was serving as a teaching assistant in two ninth grade classes: a debate class and a digital art class. Throughout the program I continued to try and be a “warm demander,” maintaining a positive relationship with the scholars while encouraging them to step out of their comfort zones. Especially in debate, where the scholars were pushed every day to speak and share their ideas in front of the class, I realized the importance of this “warm demander” role. I realized this mentality is effective not just in other jobs where I am working with students, but in any job where I am collaborating with team members.

I also led a group of eighteen scholars across all three grades, called my Family Group. We met weekly and completed activities relating to identity and self. While the program directors provided lessons that they planned out for our Family Group time, we as college interns had the freedom to choose how we wanted to teach certain lessons. One week, for example, my Family Group created identity sculptures using pipe cleaners. Each scholar chose three pipe cleaners of different colors with significant meanings, and created a small sculpture to represent a part of their identity. Then, as a group, we presented our identity sculptures as a way to learn more about each other. As another example, on our last Family Group meeting, we sat in a circle, and passed around sheets of paper, each one containing a scholar’s name. As we passed the papers around the circle, each scholar would write a positive comment about the scholar whose name was on the paper. After this activity, I saw some of my scholars slip their pages into the front of their binders to display proudly. The activities we conducted during Family Group were perhaps the most meaningful for me. During that time, I had the chance to connect with the scholars in a more informal setting. I got to share parts of my own identity and build trust with them as I learned more about them as individuals.

I have always been interested in education inequity and may pursue a career in this field after Williams. My time working for The Partners Program has made me more open to the possibility of working in education; however, through this experience I have learned much more about other possible education careers. While I have always been interested in education work, the majority of education careers I have explored have been teaching jobs, not non-profit education work. Working for an education non-profit helped me realize there are other types of education careers available, that may be more fitting to what I am looking to do after college.

The entirety of my Celebration Committee team.

Working as a Partners Program college intern was a perfect opportunity for me as I continue to search for a public service job after graduation. It was an incredible opportunity to serve the community where I grew up and was educated in, and to form relationships with and serve as a role model for hard-working middle school students of color in the Oakland public school system. I want to thank The Partners Program for this amazing learning opportunity. I additionally could not have participated in this experience without the help and support of the ’68 Center for Career Exploration and the Class of 1951. Thank you for providing me with the resources to experience such a fulfilling summer.