Internship

After only being here for a little over a month I have already seen and done some amazing things, but I haven’t talked a lot about what I spend most of my days doing and is perhaps the largest component of my gap-year: my internship.

Nayab and I are both working for a woman named Tessa, Head of English, Department of Communication, Rhetoric and the Literary Arts. She is a wonderful and inspiring person. Nayab and I have been busy applying Kings Academy to be inducted into the Round Square network of schools. It is an organization dedicated to experiential learning and is described in its literature as “a world-wide association of more than 60 schools on five continents sharing unique and ambitious goals. Students attending Round Square schools make a strong commitment, beyond academic excellence, to personal development and responsibility. This is achieved by participating in community service, work projects, exchange programs and adventuring, which can, and often does, take students half way around the world.”

Our office is in the library, where we have been spending our days researching how Kings Academy embodies the Round Square ideals and completing the application. More recently we have been designing a pamphlet which will be used in the upcoming Round Square conference in Canada and in the future as the Kings Academy Round Square information publication. We are also creating a series of posters that will hang throughout campus to inform students about Round Square and all of the schools involved all over the world.

to learn more about this organization, visit http://www.roundsquare.org/

I am learning a lot- I love being involved in such an international initiative and being able to see how schools can work together and do service on a larger scale. After the Eid holiday and when the initial steps of Round Square induction are complete, Nayab and I will be more involved with the service programs on campus.

A wonderful component of Jordanian culture is the Islamic holiday Ramadan. Ramadan offers an opportunity not only for reflection and introspection, but it also fosters a spirit of good will whereby many community service events are held during this time. Working in community service and outreach has allowed me to more closely understand the process of carrying out campus events. We recently conducted a school wide coin drive for the King Hussein Cancer Foundation. The three grades, freshmen, sophomores and juniors competed to raise the most money in an effort to present it to Princess Dina, an influential and inspiring supporter of the King Hussein Cancer Foundation. The freshmen class ended up with the most amount of money collected. Each class lined up their coins on the ground starting from the spiritual center, the three lines reached an impressive length and it was really rewarding to actually see how much money the community raised. Princess Dina came to speak about the foundation and the importance and success of the Jordan-wide and Kings Academy-wide Ramadan coin drive. A representative student from each grade presented Princess Dina with the money and said a couple of words of gratitude.