Hello! My name is Taylor Urban, and I am a 20-year-old full university honors student majoring in School Social Work with minors in American Sign Language, Human Development and Family Studies, and Political Science. In Spring 2021, I received the Gilman Scholarship to fund my study abroad program where I was originally supposed to go to London during the summer. This pandemic had other ideas and caused my program to get cancelled. I panicked and did not know what to do since I could not go abroad anymore. I spoke to the Study Abroad office and learned about ISA and their remote study abroad internships and I have never been more grateful for things being virtual.
During Summer 2021, I had the pleasure of working with ABROADER in Vietnam and being placed at EVTrust as a lead English Teacher. Even though we had an 11-hour time difference, I still felt so connected to my coworkers, the students, and the local buddies that were with ABROADER.
My internship was 9-11 am Monday-Friday and I taught 2, 45 minute long, beginner English classes to children from low-income families and I was able to make my own lesson plans. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we had feedback sessions and every other week during the 8-week internship, we had cultural exchange sessions with the local buddies through ABROADER. I was put into group chats on WhatsApp so I could talk to local buddies, the TAs and supervisors at my internship, and then one for my specific TAs for my class.
Each week was a different theme for my classes. One week was school, another was transportation, and so on and so forth. The goal of these classes was to teach the students to be able to get around an English-speaking country in the event of them needing to leave their country or if they decide to study abroad themselves. Every day I would share a fun fact about North Carolina, like how Cheerwine and Pepsi were made here, and even told the story of the Lost Colony. The students especially loved how North Carolina has both mountains and the beach. The TAs were there to help with things that the students did not understand and would translate what I was saying to help the students understand since they all varied in levels of English.
Every other week the local buddies would have cultural exchange sessions with all of the interns from various remote placements in Vietnam for us to chat about the differences between the countries we are from, we had people from Vietnam, various parts of the United States, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, and France. We talked about work culture, business, food, music, and then different topics like social media and television when we were in breakout rooms. The last session was a farewell where the local buddies sang “You Got a Friend in Me” and we were all crying and laughing together. They did such a great job supporting us and sharing video tours of Vietnam, markets, and even doing a cooking show for us.
Throughout my time with EVTrust and ABROADER, I made a few long-lasting friends with another one of the intern lead teachers from Ohio and one of my TAs from Vietnam who is in university in Hungary. I still talk to them from time to time, but I am super grateful that this remote program led to me meeting them. At the end of my internship, I was offered a full-time job with EVTrust as a lead English teacher that I sadly had to decline but was told to let them know if I ever have time to teach again. I hope to go to Vietnam to work with them in person in the future until then I hope to teach virtually so I can see the students and find out how they are doing. I am so thankful to ISA, ABROADER, Gilman, IPC/Study Abroad, the Honors College, and EVTrust for this amazing opportunity this past summer.
