Empowering Parents Through Play

In our first few weeks of work together Professor Casasola and I were trying to figure out how to get me involved. With the course of the internship changing, I would no longer be working directly with the Growing Together Through Learning and Play Curriculum. I read up on the material from the previous internship to figure out how to combine it with the new program I would be involved with, Eat Smart Be Active with Monica GoPaul. While this program focuses on nutrition rather than language development, I have been able to work well with Monica and co-facilitate meetings to help parents learn more about the importance of nutrition for their children. By recommending that the parents include their child in food prep, food choice and more with activities at home and the dinner table, I was able to connect the two programs. As the program continues I hope to be able to find more connections with the internships original curriculum and create a joint curriculum that helps improve a lot of the child’s skill from language to nutrition intelligence.

 

Hello everyone!My name is Katherine Ureña and this summer I am excited to work with CUCE-NYC, Mariana Casasola and Monica Gopaul to work on creating an engaging curriculum that helps families better serve their children as they are developing (whether it be through nutrition, language, play, or all three combined!)

Here are some more things I think you should know about me:

I am a rising junior in the College of Human Ecology studying Human Development. I am from Yonkers, NY and I am a proud Dominican! My career goal is to become apediatric Speech Pathologist and one day open up a private practice where I can provide services at affordable prices (maybe even free) to families in need.

Here is what I hope to get out of this internship:

I want to come out of this internship with more knowledge on how to help communities from within by providing the necessary tools, resources and education to those involved whether it be the children directly or parents/caregivers. I hope to get involved with the various workshops and understand how the different teams work together to make the most of their time with the families, find out what makes these programs so successful and help make them even better!

Being that this is my second time having an internship through CCE, I was lucky enough to speak at the pre-internship Luncheon and provide some insight on the organization as a whole and my experiences. I answered questions from other incoming interns and shared my story with Act for Change.

I can’t wait to document my progress throughout this experience and learn so much more about the communities and fields I am already so interested in!

CU again very soon,

Katherine