My Internship Goals

Hello Lovies

let us talk about my internship goals. What were they and did I succeed in completing all of them?

At the beginning of my internship, I set several learning goals to guide my development. These included:

1. Strengthening my professional communication skills through presentations, meetings, and written contributions.

2. Contributing to the design of a pilot educational program connecting youth in Belgium and Africa through intercultural dialogue.

3. Developing a structured framework for school discovery trips, including pre-departure, on-site, and post-reflection learning phases.

4. Deepening my understanding of workplace culture and intercultural educational practices while contributing to culturally responsive awareness materials.

5. Expanding my professional network by engaging with colleagues and professionals in the field.

6. Designing and developing three modular educational toolkits for teachers to raise awareness of neglected diseases.

While I made strong progress on most of these goals, the final objective which was developing three complete teacher toolkits was not achieved. Instead of finalizing three independent products, my work contributed to a wider range of interconnected projects, including program design, awareness materials, and pilot activities. This shift occurred due to the evolving nature of the organization's needs, time constraints, and the complexity of designing resources that required multiple stages of validation, feedback, and adaptation to ensure pedagogical and cultural appropriateness.

This experience taught me that professional learning does not always follow the clear, outcome-based structure we often expect in academic settings. In practice, educational work is shaped by collaboration, organizational priorities, and ongoing revision. Rather than producing fixed deliverables, I was participating in processes that required flexibility and responsiveness. If I were to start the internship again, I would prioritize studying in depth about the organization's structure, their goals, their workplace dynamics and accepted language, co-development earlier, open collaboration and openness to varied perspectives from everyone. I would also focus less on completing a set number of outputs and more on understanding how each contribution fits into a larger educational ecosystem.

Ultimately, not fully completing this goal was not a failure but an important learning moment. It helped me understand that educational development is iterative rather than linear: ideas are tested, revised, shared, and sometimes redirected. Recognizing this has allowed me to shift from a product-oriented mindset to a process-oriented one, which is essential for working in real-world educational contexts where impact is built gradually through collaboration and continuous improvement.