Few students leave Virginia Wesleyan with as much passion as senior Laura Dudley has for teaching. She has always thought she wanted to be a teacher and her feelings were confirmed after her experience at a summer camp in 2005. She is attending Old Dominion University's graduate program for early childhood education. In her quest to become a teacher, she completed an internship during the fall semester at the Office of Media and Communications Development in the Department of Community Relations for Virginia Beach City Public Schools.
"I enjoy everything I do there so it's not like work," said Dudley. "It's fun."
The Department of Community Relations organizes special events, manages public relations for the entire school system and produces publications for district teachers as well as parents. Dudley was able to help in all of these areas, particularly writing.
"Once I told them I like to write, they started giving me writing assignments," said Dudley.
She later found out that she was the first and only intern to ever be given a writing assignment for Kaleidoscope, an employee only newsletter.
Dudley was also given assignments for Apple-A-Day, the parent newsletter, and assignments for the diversity Web page on the Virginia Beach City Public Schools' Web site. One huge writing task she was given was to write grant summaries. The task entailed reading through 118 grant proposals made by teachers in the school system for new educational programs and then scaling them down to a three-sentence summary of each.
"The proposals were really creative so it's neat to learn about each one," said Dudley.
There were three big tasks Dudley helped to organize over the course of her internship: the new superintendent's receptions, the teacher of the year dinner, and writing a song for The House Students Built.
Dr. James Merrill, originally from North Carolina, was chosen to become the new superintendent for Virginia Beach City Public Schools and Dudley helped to coordinate his receptions.
"There were actually two receptions," she said. "There was an internal reception for teachers and employees, and there was an external reception." Guests such as the mayor and senator arrived for the external reception and Dudley was even able to meet the dean of education from ODU.
The second big event Dudley helped to facilitate was the teacher of the year dinner.
"This was probably my favorite event because I want to be a teacher," said Dudley. "I got to see the best of the best and they're a model for the kind of teacher I want to be."
The last big assignment she helped with was writing song lyrics for The House Students Built, an organization that builds a house for the purpose of selling it on the market. The money made from the sale goes back into the Education Foundation, the organization that distributes the funds for the teacher's grants. The song was to the tune of "YMCA" and became a huge hit.
"It catapulted into this huge thing," said Dudley. "They even brought in students from Princess Anne High School to sing." The song was made into a video presentation and shown at a reception held for the teachers who were awarded grants for their educational program proposals.
Dudley enjoyed her internship experience with Virginia Beach City Public Schools due to the positive atmosphere in the office as well as the value of the real world experience she received.
"I feel like I've grown as a person and I see how it's given me a real-world outlook," she said. "It's a sneak peek of the world after graduation. If I didn't want to be a teacher, then I've found my dream job."
Dudley was offered a position in the Department of Community Relations after only two weeks at her internship. She has decided to attend graduate school for early childhood education, but will always be grateful for the wonderful opportunity her internship provided her and the wonderful people she met along the way.
"My heart is in teaching."