Kelsie's Internship

Today's blog is written by Kelsie Mead, Culinary Arts student at Shepherds College:

Hi, I’m Kelsie Mead.  I’m a third-year student at Shepherds College.  On Fridays, I attend academic and Bible classes from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and on Mondays through Thursdays I work at my internship at Oakridge Care Center.  My shift begins at 6:40 a.m. and ends at 2:00 p.m.   Follow me as I walk you through a typical day at Oakridge Care Center…. 

When I arrive, I make sure the coffee is in the coffee carafe and place carafes on a cart.  I take the coffee to the north/south dining room and serve coffee and cereal for the residents.   After breakfast, I wash the serving utensils using a commercial dishwasher.  Next, I announce over the intercom that breakfast is now being served in the main dining room.  I proceed to the compartment sink where I wash pots and pans.  After breakfast is completed in the main dining room, I set-up carts to pick-up the dishes from tables and wash the tables.  My final task with breakfast is to take out the trash. 

Once breakfast is completed, it’s time to prepare for lunch.  My responsibilities vary from day to day.  Sometimes I prepare a dessert.  I find the recipe, get the ingredients, mix ingredients together, and bake or put into the refrigerator.  Recently I made peach cobbler.  The residents enjoyed it.  When I don’t prepare a dessert, I clean out the refrigerators, scrub trash cans, organize pots and pans, etc. 

For lunch, I serve coffee and the side dish in the north/south dining room.  Side dishes include: salads, jello, fruits, and desserts.   Then, I wash the serving utensils using a commercial dishwasher.   Next, I announce over the intercom that lunch is now being served in the main dining room.  I proceed to the compartment sink where I wash pots and pans.  While lunch is served in the main dining room, if something is needed I get it for them.  Finally, I set-up the carts for dining room clean-up but I don’t clean the dining room instead I wash the pots and pans. 

I am thankful that I was hired for this internship and I enjoy working with my co-workers because they understand my vision problem.  Due to my vision, I sometimes have to wash dishes more than once.  Diligence means to invest my time and energy to complete each task assigned to me.  I practice diligence when I wash dishes.  The definition of initiative is doing a task before I’m told to do it.  I take initiative with my cleaning tasks by looking at the cleaning list and completing chores without being asked. 





Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.

Shepherds College Character Trait #1: Diligence

Definition of Diligence – constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken; persistent exertion of body or mind.

As I wrote in the blog, A College with Character, Shepherds College emphasizes six character traits to equip students for internships and life after college.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be showing you what each trait looks like in our program.

After reading the above definition for diligence, I had this thought, “Wow. I am so not the person who should be writing about this topic.”  

I am the woman who purchased birthday cards for every friend and family member at the beginning of the year – in 2005. They are still sitting in pristine, unsigned condition at the bottom of my sock drawer.  They’re Hallmarks, so I figure in 93 more years my descendants can sell them at an antique fair and feel the love at that time. 

I’m the woman who began writing a journal when I was nine or ten years old. I told everyone that I would daily document my life’s journey with the written word. I kept at it diligently for about… about… well, hmmm, the last entry I remember making went something like this, “My goldfish Killer died. I forgot to clean his stupid tank and my stupid sister didn’t remind me. Good thing Jaws and Orca are still alive, but they look funny. It was a bad day.” Jaws and Orca died that night and my last memory of those poor fish is wrapping them up in a paper towel and putting them at the bottom of my sock drawer to await burial in the spring.

I’m the woman who made the resolution to become the oldest power walker in the 2016 Summer Olympics after hearing that these athletes have the lowest percentage of body fat compared with the other Olympic athletes. I trained a total of about 5 minutes then realized I was too sinfully proud to waddle around the neighborhood in Spandex. My cute, new athletic socks ended up at the bottom of… um, my sock drawer.

I’m also the woman who intends to clean out her sock drawer every weekend, but always finds something else more pressing – like sorting magazine recipes by dominant vegetable used, or color-coordinating my hangers to match my shirts. To be truthful though, I’m also a little bit scared to find out what other guilt/shame/horror-inducing items lay at the bottom of my sock drawer. I think I’ll leave that for my descendants to discover too.

So now that I’ve come to the realization that sock drawers = the death of diligence, I’ve decided to go with my original instinct - I really shouldn’t be the one writing about this. I’m going to let the Shepherds College staff tell you about it themselves:

Angela Houk, Dean of Shepherds College, said, “At Shepherds College, diligence means investing my time and energy to complete each task assigned to me. Students learn this character trait by completing class assignments, chores and service projects. When students invest time completing assignments, their grades reflect their efforts. When students complete chores, the students and those living in their residential area all benefit from a clean community. 

It may be easier to take the quick way out, but when we invest time to complete tasks, we receive the satisfaction of a job well done.”

Miss Luchterhand is one instructor who teaches diligence in her classroom. She is having the students do research projects in Language Arts. The students have to find information about a state using books and the internet. They wanted to give up when she told them that they can’t use Wikipedia, but that gave her the opportunity to talk about the importance of diligence.

In Study Skills, the students show diligence by keeping their lockers clean. Miss Luchterhand randomly performs locker checks. Usually there will be at least one messy locker which gives her another opportunity to discuss diligence with the students.

Mr. Andrus supports the teaching of diligence through his use of repetition in the classroom. He asks his students to repeatedly perform tasks on the computer until they learn the skill – a great example of diligence in action!

Mr. Gaschke, Residential Life Faculty, teaches diligence through the use of tools such as check lists, instruction notebooks and chore charts. These tools keep the students accountable for their tasks and also serve as reminders until the jobs get done.

The character trait of diligence is a vital one in the work force so we teach and support it in multiple ways throughout our program. The students learn to give 100% of their time and energy to important tasks. 

At Shepherds College, the students will learn to diligently follow their dreams of Appropriate Independence - as long as they stay out of my sock drawer.

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.

A College with Character

Back in 2009, Shepherds College had just completed its first year. We had only a handful of students, but we could already see the potential in the program.

The leadership was dynamic, hands-on and visionary.

The teachers were warm, energetic and creative.

The curriculum was simplified, yet groundbreaking.

The program was comprehensive, life-changing and one-of-a-kind.

We all knew it could be successful in bringing hope for a brighter future to students with intellectual disabilities.  But, how would we reach the prospective students, where were they, what were they like, and what would the students be like after completing three years of our program?

This was the stuff of marketing, so in 2009 we brought in professionals who helped us develop a plan to reach young adults with intellectual disabilities who wanted an advanced education - people who needed to hear that there was a new post-secondary option available to them.

The marketing company gave us a lot of good information and a solid plan for moving forward with college recruitment, but the one area they couldn’t help us with – the one area we needed to work out on our own – was “values.” What values would underpin the whole college program? What values would resonate with all individuals? What values would we teach to the students to impact their future relationships, influence their decisions as independent adults and equip them to excel in their internships and future careers?

After many marketing and faculty meetings, we decided on six values – or character traits - that we hoped to instill in the students by the time they graduated:

Diligence – Investing their time and energy to complete each task assigned to them

Discernment – Perceiving the difference between right and wrong

Initiative – Recognizing and doing what needs to be done before they are asked to do it

Integrity – Knowing and doing what is right all the time

Respect – Recognizing and showing value to God, authority, others, property, and themselves

Responsibility – Knowing and doing what is expected of them

The students would hear about and learn these character traits in a variety of ways every day in their classes. The Residential Life training would support the development of these character traits in the students’ living areas. The faculty and staff would exemplify these character traits in their own lives so students could see them as role models for the values of the college.

And what company wouldn’t want an employee who exhibited these traits in the workplace? 

They are a cornerstone for the success of our program, and they provide a solid path for the students’ journey toward Appropriate Independence.

Watch this blog in the coming weeks. I hope to give you an idea of what teaching each character trait looks like in different classes, in Res Life, and in the activity of the students.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

                                                                                                        Unknown

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.