This year,  staff and students welcomed two new interns to the building, Mrs. Rowe and Ms. Shankar.

Mrs. Rowe is a teaching intern who wants her “certification in English so I’ll be able to teach seventh through twelfth grade English/language arts”.

“My undergrad was University of Wisconsin- Lacrosse. I majored in English with an emphasis on writing and a minor in communications. My graduate program [in education] is at University of New Haven.”

Mrs. Rowe’s choice of internship was between here and Norwich Free Academy. She likes it here, stating that “there are a lot of excellent teachers here at this school” and said the good thing about this internship is that she gets to go around a lot and teach different grades and students. However, she admits that she is “still figuring out my way around here”.

“I turn around going up the stairs. I turn left when I am supposed to be going right,” she laughed. “My instinct is to go the wrong way all the time, and then I’m like ‘nope!” she said.

Mrs. Rowe did have inspiration that made her pursue teaching.

“ I had a lot of good teachers growing up. If I had to pick one, there was this English teacher who was super nerdy about Shakespeare, and loved him, and just like her enthusiasm for the subject was amazing. You know, but I didn’t have [only] that one person who made me want to teach,” she said.

Mrs. Rowe wanted to be a teacher because she didn’t realize how much she liked kids until she had one. So after her daughter was born she really considered being a teacher more. She likes educating people and watching them learn. Five years from now, she hopes to be teaching in a high school setting.

The other new intern is Cheshire native Ms. Shankar, Dr. Hunt’s, the school psychologist, intern.

Ms. Shankar attended Marywood University for music therapy. She worked for three years, but decided she wanted to do more to help people, so she went back to school at the University of Connecticut for her Ph.D.

“I wanted to be a psychologist because I wanted more experience. And I am also interested in many different type of forms psychology. And I also get great satisfaction helping other people. I find it very rewarding,”she said.

When asked why she chose her, Ms. Shankar said,“I chose this school because it has an excellent reputation with other UCONN interns, who completed their internship here. I feel that Dr. Hunt has a wealth of experience to offer his interns that he supervises. I also wanted to stay in Connecticut.”

“I want to work in a high school setting. High school is definitely my favorite. I like the high school setting the best because there are a lot of diverse issues. It really allows me to use all the skills I have been taught in my classes and field experiences,” she added.
       
Like Mrs. Rowe, Ms. Shankar has people who inspired her to follow her career path.

“There are several people that I look up too. The first one would be my advisor, Dr. Melissa Bray up at UCONN. She is a wonderful woman and helped me so much on my path to become a psychologist. Before coming to WHS, I had a mentorship at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. Dr. Ana Verissimo, who is a medical doctor who specializes in integrative medicine. I would also say another person that I look up to would be Dr. Maryanna Polukhin. She is a medical doctor in Newington, CT, who is a very generous person, a very caring person, and who is also very passionate about helping others. I would also say all of my other field advisors. I’m sure Dr. Hunt will inspire me also.”
Her take on the school year and school community: “The administration, staff, and students are so friendly. I definitely feel part of Lancer Nation”. 

She enjoys having her office space in the positive foundations classroom on the second floor because it allows Ms. Shankar to meet more students. When she has free time, she plans counseling groups, and is currently working on a couple of projects. One of them is a brochure of apps for stress management, which she is very excited about.

In five years, she hopes to be a working psychologist in a high school.