Who am I?

My name is Leslie Hernandez and I have been living in Berlin since August 2018. I am a 3rd year university student from the University of California, Santa Barbara. I started studying German in high school, and have continued to learn for the past 7 years. I always knew I wanted to study abroad, and I was very excited to get the chance to study in Berlin for a year of my University education.

Why did I choose to do my Internship at SprInt Förderunterricht?

I spent all of last year working at a local high school in Santa Barbara. My job was to tutor and mentor the students in my class. However, these kids were not just any kids, they were students whose parents were immigrants, and some of them were immigrants themselves. They were in this program because they were amazingly smart students, but they just needed support that their parents were not able to give them.

So, when I heard about the Medienhof, I got very excited because not only is this program similar to the program we had at home, but I was excited to be able to help and connect with students with very different immigrant backgrounds than those that I am used to seeing in California.

The reason this type of work always attracts me is because my parents are also immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador. So, growing up I always wished there was a program at my school that had helped me with school or even just be there for any type of educational and emotional support that I needed.

Now that I am older and have more knowledge about these things, I am always looking for chances to help those that need it. This is why I am interning here.

How do I like the Medienhof-Wedding so far?

I am not going to lie, my first couple of days were definitely not easy. From the very first encounter with helping a student, I ran into a problem. I didn’t know how to explain Math in German. Luckily, the very intelligent students are bilingual, so I was able to help them with math even when half of what I said was in English.

My other obstacle came when helping students with their English. Since I grew up speaking English, I never had to learn the names for things such as simple present, simple past, etc. Of course I know what sounds correct, but the challenge was really trying to explain to the students, whose mother toungue of course is not English.

All these challenges presented themselves in only two days of working at the Medienhof-Wedding, and I am grateful. I am grateful that I am being challenged because that’s the only way to learn. But most of all, I am grateful to be meeting so many intelligent students from so many different backgrounds. I am really excited to see what the next couple of months will bring.