Kimberly Crowther is part of BYU's Educational Leadership and Foundations program (EdLF). She interned as an administrator at Lehi High School. Read about her experience here!
What was your internship experience?
As an administrative intern, I shadowed and worked with the principal and all of the assistant principals, including the PLC coach and the athletic director. My responsibilities included monitoring student behavior, welcoming kids to school, tracking attendance and grades, calling parents and talking to individual students to help them attend school and pass classes, handling emergency medical situations (allergy attack, bug bite, etc.), and analyzing summer school data to determine effectiveness and to justify continuation of the program because of its benefits for students.
The experience itself was extremely beneficial because the job(s) I'm preparing for will most likely be overwhelming, with a variety of demands that I haven't had before. This internship showed me some of those possible demands and how to handle a situation that's completely new to me.
How did your courses prepare you and what did you take away from this experience?
The courses gave me some background knowledge about being an administrator, and then they also gave me several case study examples of what other administrators have been required to deal with and allowed me to determine what I would have/could have done in those situations.
Overall professionalism, strengthened my communication skills (talking to parents, high school students, teachers, and other administrators and office staff frequently), collaboration skills (worked with other administrators and other admin. interns on several projects), and my organization skills (prioritizing what gets done when, as well as making sure that even the bottom of the to do list still gets done eventually).
It was great to get some secondary education administrative experience and the admin team at Lehi High School was incredible to work with.
