Samson Dessalines | CIIP 2023 Blog Portfolio

Orientation Week

Orientation week for CIIP went great! I met a lot of cool people that I look forward to hanging out with in the future. I also learned a lot from the many guest speakers that we had, and they taught me priceless knowledge about the history of Baltimore and the impact (both the good and bad) that Hopkins has had on this city. Considering the treacherous history of gentrification and redlining that led to the Black Butterfly, I learned how to be more considerate of the people of Baltimore and the struggles that they go through. I am privileged for my status as a Hopkins student, and orientation week showed me how I can leverage this privilege for the betterment of others. This orientation week also helped made me feel more comfortable about the transportation system around Baltimore and got me more familiar with the area. I literally didn’t even know that we had a subway before this week, and that’s definitely a resource that I need to start using. One thing that challenged me about orientation was definitely the 9-5 schedule that we had, but it was necessary to get us ready for our internships. One of my favorite parts about orientation week has gotta be the cookout after the scavenger hunt. It was fun to just kick back and hang out with everybody, and I learned a lot about the friends that I made throughout this week. Another top-tier event that we did was the acting workshop, and I really enjoyed seeing everyone’s goofy side. The acting workshop also reiterated to me the importance of listening to others with your whole body and allowing people to express themselves. All in all, I am really hyped to start working for CornerTeam and to be a part of this amazing community.

Week 1

My first week as an intern at Corner Team was pretty fun! I helped clean the classroom that I will be working at and a lot of other rooms to help get the program ready for this summer. It was pretty nice seeing everything come together after working hard with my co-workers, and I really liked the team dynamic Corner Team establishes. For instance, we had a team meeting this Wednesday to meet each other and go over the plans for this summer, which really helped everyone get on the same page. We plan on having more weekly meetings like this, and I like how consistent and frequent these team meetings are. Whenever I was not working at the site, I also tried to get my hours in by planning out my summer lesson plans for the kids. My co-worker and I already got a rough outline of what lessons we want to implement, and it is definitely coming altogether. I would also like to highlight an experience I had this week that reflects the innate privilege that I have. To elaborate, my co-workers and I need to get CPR certified in case one of our students needs medical help. While my supervisor is working hard to see if she can get everyone CPR certified for free, I decided to try to leverage my privilege as a Hopkins student and use the resources that I have readily available. In case my supervisor is not able to find us a program to get us CPR certified, I think that I may have found one through my connections with CIIP. This type of privilege is evident in all aspects of my experience in Baltimore so far, and this internship has overall allowed me to better understand the social imbalance present in Baltimore City.

Week 2

This week started off great and I had a lot of fun working with Corner Team. However, I ended up pretty sick on Thursday and it made it really hard for me to go to work in person for the rest of the week. My supervisor was very understanding of my situation and allowed me to work remotely, which tremendously helped my health. At Corner Team I have to design summer lesson plans to teach kids in July, and I was able to get the majority of my plans done during the time that I was sick. I am very glad to have such a supportive team to work with this summer, and I look forward to our program ramping up in July. I really believe that I have adjusted well to this hybrid environment as it grants me a lot of flexibility to be productive even when I am not feeling too well. On the days that I am able to make it in person, the team and I get a lot done and it feels extremely rewarding to help our community. And on the days when I have to stay at home, I still feel like I did a lot that was worthwhile. For the next week, I plan on coming in person a lot more to walk through some of the lessons that I wrote up. I also have to do a presentation next week explaining the STEM portion of the program to my co-workers. I look forward to seeing how everything goes for me. All in all, CIIP has taught me more about the importance of communication and has also allowed me to understand the dynamics of a hybrid environment.

Week 3

Work was awesome this week. We are finalizing all of our lesson plans and boxing lessons here at Corner Team, and I am really excited to start up the summer program on July 10th. This week we had our orientation week on Thursday, and it was nice setting that up for the parents and kids. On a typical day of work, I usually start the day virtual and work on my summer lesson plans from 11 am to 3 pm. I then ride my bike over to work at around 4 pm and help clean around the building and help organize supplies from 4:30 pm to around 6 pm. We have a weekly staff meeting every Wednesday at 12 pm, and on those days I just work at the site until about 5 pm, and then I go back home to work on lesson plans. My co-worker Coach Smoove is one of the many interesting people that I met during my time at Corner Team. He is currently working on his acting career and even has some experience on Netflix. In addition to some cool stuff that I’ve seen at Corner Team, I’m also working with some interesting equipment. For example, the “Corner” device that I have to use for my summer classes measures punch force, punch speed, and many more factors of a boxer’s punches. It is extremely versatile in the information that it gives, and it makes my job a lot easier to teach STEM-related classes like physics and relate that to boxing. Lastly, settling into my everyday routine within my internship is pretty easy. I am used to having a routine as a track athlete, and it is nice to have a task to achieve each day. I look forward to seeing what the following week has in store for me!

Week 4

So far, my goals for the summer have not changed. I still want to become a productive member of the Baltimore community, and this partnership has catalyzed my progress in doing so. To elaborate, I’ve been able to meet a lot of new people and learn more about their stories in Baltimore. I was also able to help clean the boxing gym area and make it a more sanitized space for the people. On my site, we have a summer program with Youth Works that is supposed to start next Monday, and I am pretty excited to help out with that. I plan on teaching the kids a lot about STEM and how it relates to boxing, and I look forward to any of the challenges that may come my way. Challenges help build character, and I hope that I learn new skills from this experience that will allow me to become more involved with my community in the future. I strongly feel like I am on the right track to meet my goals by the end of the summer, and I will continue to go to more community-organized events to learn more about the beauty of Baltimore. My favorite community event that I went to so far was this Caribbean festival that my supervisor told me about. This festival had amazing music, food, and people to hang out with, and I had a lot of fun diving into the culture of Baltimore. I will continue this trend of learning more about Baltimore’s culture, and I am excited to see what the future has in store for me.

Week 5

Week 5 of my internship is done! So far, I have learned a lot of things through my internship that will propel me closer to my career goals. For example, working with youth has helped me understand the community more and understand the needs of others. It has also helped me develop more emotional skills and learn how to better listen to others. At Corner Team, we have now started our summer program with Youth Works, and I have to teach a STEM class every Tuesday and Thursday. These classes have helped me develop my public speaking skills a lot more and have made me a lot more comfortable speaking in front of others. The fact that I am teaching STEM classes has also been a benefit to my professional career because I want to become a biomedical engineer. On top of the work that we do in the classroom, Corner Team also works at a vacant lot and we are trying to make it a public and clean community area for everyone to use. We hope that by doing so we can help bring the community together and provide a cleaner area for community activities. This has helped me develop my skills as a team player and a leader, as I have to lead a group of kids to help clean the vacant lot. Outside of the in-person work that I do, I also have to prepare and research the class topics that I teach, and this has helped me harness my time management skills. All in all, my summer experience at Corner Team has proven to be versatile, and I am very happy with the personal growth that I made so far.

Week 7

Week 7 at CIIP has been great! I went rowing with the Youth Works kids at Corner Team and we learned about the fundamentals of the sport and how to take care of a boat. It was a lot of fun learning a new skill, and the kids definitely enjoyed themselves in the water! We rowed with the Baltimore Rowing Club and they did a fantastic job teaching us the basics, and we were able to get a full 4-person squad rowing out in the water after only 3 days of training! Half of our Youth Works kids did not go rowing, but instead, they went sailing with some of my co-workers at Corner Team. They also learned a lot of priceless skills and had a fun time in the water during this insanely hot week! Corner Team does a great job mending in with the community, as they expose the kids to new opportunities and clubs like the Baltimore Rowing Club. Additionally, the kids can engage with the community during our monthly community day. We had our community day this Saturday, and I enjoyed setting up the event and engaging with the people of Baltimore. To add on to another topic, I feel like Corner Team has a lot of potential to work with other CIIP placements that work with kids, as many of the placements work with Youth Works. This evident intersectionality between placements can be used to our advantage, as we could host more events with places like SquashWise and get more kids engaged with other members of our community. I hope that Corner Team could work something like that out with other organizations, and I am excited to see how the final weeks go for me at CIIP!