Joey Hua-Phan ’22

Paraclete, Boston, MA

During the summer, I worked with a non-profit organization 
called Paraclete—an after-school program tutoring students from elementary to middle school in the Boston area. Each summer, Paraclete offers a program for underserved youth in Boston that is filled with a variety of classes ranging from English to art to robotics, and they also host free field trips around Boston.

I was assigned six students to tutor. Due to the pandemic, their school year was cut short for a few months, so it was my responsibility to help teach any lost lesson plans and reinforce what they learned during their interrupted school year. For example, I spent a good deal of my time teaching long division to three of my students. I used games and fun alternatives to help teach them the fundamentals of division. I also had another student who was struggling with studying for the ISEE exam, which is a high school entrance exam. We spent hours going over practice problems and reviewing tips and tricks on how to solve certain math problems that may appear within the exam. This experience was absolutely rewarding as I was able to form meaningful relationships with my students throughout the summer and also continue to hone my teaching and lesson-planning skills.

Although my intended future career is to become a doctor and not an academic teacher, this experience taught me how to interact with younger kids and how to effectively teach and communicate with them. This skill can easily be applied to the medical field when teaching younger patients about illnesses, treatments, etc. That is to say, teaching is a vital part of becoming a doctor, and I am very interested in continuing to exercise this skill in my future internships and jobs. Most importantly, this experience has encouraged me to participate in more community-outreach type volunteer jobs, especially in my own community in Boston, whether it be volunteering at a youth clinic or tutoring them at a non-profit organization. In the future, I am planning on doing community outreach regarding POC within the LGBTQ+ community in Boston, similar to my internship last year working at an LGBTQ+ clinic at Fenway Health.

Additionally, this experience has convinced me to take more courses regarding social injustices within Black and Latinx communities and other marginalized communities. My goal is to take at least two more social justice classes during my senior year at Williams and also become more involved in outreach programs within Williamstown.

Lastly, I want to thank the Kraft Family for helping to provide this internship 
and the ’68 Center for Career Exploration 
for opening the door to this wonderful opportunity.