PRACTICUM |
As my time in the Media, Self, & Society (MSS) program was slowly coming to an end, I realized I needed to start thinking about my end-of-the-year practicum. Like many future students will be, I was lost on what to do. I was running out of time. I was close to giving up until I realized the answer was right in front of me. This is quite literally true since I was at church when I found out. I had been a member of my church’s youth ministry since I was 12 years old. Up until the beginning of the pandemic, I was promoted to Youth Leader. Towards the end of 2020, I was asked to help out with The Youth’s social media. I was hesitant for a while until I finally connected the position to what I was learning in the MSS program. At last, I finally found what my practicum would be on, and thus I was promoted to Youth Leader and Social Media Manager for The Youth of Elim DMV.
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For any future Media student stuck on what to do for their practicum, I would advise you to take a look into your life and find the things you are passionate about. As Kelly Brower (coordinator) has helped me realize, almost anything can be connected back to media. Thus, I advise you to take what your passionate about, reflect, and look for opportunities that are related to that area so you can work on something you love. If you are still stuck, I highly encourage you to reach out for help! Kelly helped me greatly in finally deciding what to do for my practicum and she will do the same for you. Asking questions is one of the most important things you can do. You can find any of the program coordinators’ emails on the UMD websites and/or you can simply ask them to set up a time to meet on Zoom! There’s no shame in asking for help.
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As mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to become a primary Youth Leader and the social media manager for my youth ministry’s (The Youth) Instagram page. As a result, I had more responsibilities than ever. In terms of being a Youth Leader, some of my responsibilities were event planning, coordinating and leading services, co-teaching, and facilitating interaction among the youth. From late January to early April, I was planning and leading youth groups through zoom. In each zoom session, I would teach a part of the material and also lead the discussion at the end. Recently, I realized that this entire time I was basically a co-teacher for my youth ministry. I was doing the same things a teacher would probably do. Since my major is in pre-elementary education, this is very important to me. I was able to get a sense of what being a teacher is like; what making a difference in a student is like. I learned so much from this part of my journey, such as how to engage an audience, how to promote events, and how to be patient with a group of students. Most importantly, I learned about patience, vulnerability, and fellowship. I’ll be honest, it was very stressful at times when I felt like I wasn’t impacting my students, but it is the small victories that change your whole perspective. In one of our zoom sessions, I was giving reminders on worthiness and their importance to the world, and I had received many private messages that went along the lines of “I really needed this right now, thank you.” That one sentence reminded me why I want to become a teacher.
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In terms of managing the Instagram page, I would take a couple of hours throughout the week to schedule, plan, and design graphics and posts. This was probably the hardest part of my practicum. Managing social media is not as easy as it looks and it can take hours to even come up with one post. It’s difficult because there’s a lot of factors to take into account before you even start designing. When designing posts for a business or organization, it’s important to study your audience to get a better understanding of how to engage them. With this, you have to design posts that will appeal to them, while also promoting the message or event you want to give (this also deals with some of the things we learned in CPMS). For instance, here are a couple of posts I made from scratch.
These posts are colorful, have only capitalized letters, and are formatted in a unique way. They do not look professional, they do not have neutral colors either. Because of this, these posts got more engagement and they successfully promoted my messages. Since I began posting, The Youth’s Instagram has gained over 20 followers (which is a milestone for us). Thus, I learned a lot about how to take my passion for youth ministry work and spirituality and portray that through my designs. I also learned about how promoting events can lead to bigger turnouts (hence why we had a successful Yth Night)! Also, I found a new passion: design! This practicum allowed me to discover new interests, learn more about the role of media in organizations (even churches!), and have fun doing it.
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Moving forward, I plan to take everything I learned from this journey and apply it to my future in education. I have always loved working with children and teens, and I am grateful for my experience as a youth leader and social media manager which gave me even more insight into how to work with them. I hope to continue taking courses in education so I can expand my knowledge and skills, get certified in teaching, and soon become an elementary or middle school teacher. I also hope to work with kids in another way, such as joining organizations or nonprofits that strive to help students get the best education they deserve.
