Kako is in her last semester of the IEDP. She is currently living in Fukui, Japan. The time difference between Fukui and Philadelphia meant that I had to wake up really early (for a Sunday) and she had to stay up late for us to be able to have this conversation. However, we had a great time chatting and I am happy to share the … Continue reading Kako’s Knowledgeable Decisions
Hi everyone! For today’s blog post, I had the opportunity to ask Amy Liang a couple of questions about her journey to the IEDP. Amy is the Graduate Assistant in charge of the IEDP’s Instagram (follow it!) and the monthly newsletter. Leslie: Can you tell me a little bit about your background? Amy: I’m a born and raised New York City native, and I went … Continue reading Amy’s Adventures: A Community Health Volunteer’s Journey into Ed
Aanchal’s current location: Siliguri, West Bengal, India Time Zone: 9.5 hours ahead of Philadelphia Managing work and classes in different time zones seems to be interesting and taxing at the same time. Having been a teacher for the past few years in a boarding school where I used to eat breakfast with my students everyday at 7:00am, it feels a little weird to start school … Continue reading Grabbing dinner between classes with Aanchal
The Journey to IEDP series was created to give readers an understanding of the myriad experiences that have led us to the IEDP. For prospective students, we hope to answer questions of how and why we decided to come to the IEDP, what the decision-making process of applying to and deciding among offers was like, and how the IEDP has aligned with our goals and … Continue reading Journey to IEDP 2.3: What’s Your Purpose?
The matchmaking is over. After hundreds of emails, interviews, and general running around, the IEDP internships are about to begin! The 2017-18 cohort will be all over the map – from right here in the USA, down to Peru, over onto the African continent (Senegal, South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia), through the Middle East (Jordan and Lebanon), and into Asia (India, Cambodia, China and … Continue reading Ready, set, go!
Summaries appear in several ways, though they always depend on the situation. For this internship, they can be formal, shaped into final reports and reflections both written and spoken that are shared with supervisors and professors. As I’ve found with family members, the summary is often confined to a few sentences that use far too many blanket statements. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll have an … Continue reading Internship reflections
Well, the final week is over, and I have two days to go before I leave Cambodia. Cue the sentimental music? Well… Though I am saddened to be ending my contract with AAC and saying goodbye to my wonderful coworkers, I don’t necessarily want to dedicate this post to a review of my internship. I simply wanted to further enlighten my readers (all 17 of … Continue reading Work.2
You know the game. Name a movie and within six degrees of connection, in some way it ends with Kevin Bacon. Perhaps the game requires some updating for today’s context, but the principle remains the same, that the world grows smaller every day. I’ve found the Six Degrees principle can even be applied to international development. There are many things that you can learn as … Continue reading Six degrees
From my office desk, I can see cars and motorbikes jamming along Preah Monivong Boulevard and the ephemeral downpours soaking the street as I read through Cambodia’s Education Sector Plan for 2014-2018. I’ve grown increasingly familiar with that document: most of my work revolves around analysing policy and the constraints the country’s education system has in implementing it. As I mentioned in my last post, … Continue reading Work
This past week has been an emotional one, seemingly throwing all of the feelings that one can experience within the span of six days. Writing about it feels like pulling teeth. I go back and forth between wanting to talk about it and not, knowing that sometimes people don’t want to be burdened by the weight of these conversations, especially when happiness and good events … Continue reading Impact
The International Educational Development Program 