Week 6: Personal Contributions to CommonLit
At this point, I am a little over halfway through my internship at CommonLit. As our main priorities, the other intern and I have taken on the weekly publication obligations. For this, we input the text and all required information into the backend of the website. Then we copy-edit the texts to ensure there were no mistakes and all questions for the texts make sense and are consistent with CommonLit standards. Because of other projects such as making a full year curriculum and making interim assessments, publication had been a low priority for the full-time team. With our help, teachers will have around 150 more texts available to them on the site at the beginning of the school year to choose from as they make their lesson plans for the next year.
Along with publishing texts in English, I have been assisting with CommonLit Español. In the past year, CommonLit has been expanding to Mexico and adding Spanish texts to the website. Because only one person in the office has adequate Spanish skills to assist the Mexico team, the project can often get put on hold. The other intern and I have Spanish experience so we have been able to help edit and publish Spanish texts. With our help, CommonLit will be able to meet their goal of publishing 75 Spanish texts by August, so teachers in Mexico will also have a diverse assortment of texts to choose from.
I have also been working on an independent project. I have been curating Native American texts, which is a category of texts lacking on the website. Because not much is taught about Native Americans in school and thus there are many misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding them, their history and their place in America, finding texts that can give students a more well-rounded education about them is a priority for CommonLit. I am able to use my experience in American Indian Literature to guide my search, and I hope this project will give CommonLit the materials and resources they need to expand their Native American text collection.
It sounds as though you’ve been an invaluable member of the CommonLit team. Again, great examples to demonstrate the ways in which you’ve contributed AND how those contributions feed the larger organizational goal. Excellent. Glad you could bring your American Indian expertise in literature to the organization, that is a tremendous asset.