Hello from New Orleans! I've never had a blog before, but I figure that this is my best and most effective way to stay in contact with friends and family without flooding your email inboxes. I know I've waited quite a while to get this thing going, but I plan on updating it every few days with what I've been up to.
Just to refresh your memory, I'm in New Orleans with a program through Duke called Duke Engage. Duke Engage is funded by huge donations from Melinda Gates and the Duke Endowment. We had to apply to get funding for an 8-week "immersive civic engagement experience" anywhere in the world. All of that just means that Duke is paying for me to live down here in a dorm at Loyola University and we have stipends for food and transportation.
I also have an internship at Langston Hughes Academy Charter School. It is a fairly new school. After Hurricane Katrina, the state took over the schools and now some of NOLA schools are under the Orleans Parish and others are under the Recovery School District. There is a huge wave of charter schools in the area...mainly because it allows the principal to run the school how he/she wants (longer school days, more control over faculty, etc.). I'm still learning a lot about how Langston Hughes works, but with my interest in education and my major in public policy, this is a great place to be. My main task for the summer is to set up the library at the school. It is very tedious work (putting thousands of books into their computer system), but it really is helping...the students didn't even have access to all of the books this past year because there were just stacks from Scholastic thrown in a corner.
Thanks for getting this far in my first blog post. Future ones will be shorter, but that's a decent rundown of what I'm doing and why I'm here! I hope to keep updating with issues I come across, updates on my life, good stories, and fun experiences (hopefully pictures too!). I hope everyone is doing well and you'll be hearing from me soon! Feel free to leave me a comment. Take care!
