Spending the Fall with Open Books

Name: Julia Morgenstern

Year: Junior

Major: English

CFS Class: Field Studies in the Humanities

Employer: Open Books

 

I am interning at a literacy nonprofit called Open Books for my CFS internship. As a literacy intern, I act as the site leader for the Book Buddies program, which brings 10 volunteers to a CPS elementary school to read one on one with students. This time spent engaging in guided reading is shown to improve students’ skills, confidence, interest, and time spent reading. I commute to the school site twice a week in the morning, and then head to the Open Books office in the West Loop. At the office I prepare for the next session of Buddies and help out with other literacy programming. I love my work and feel really lucky to have the opportunity to explore my interests with CFS!

I am in the CFS Humanities course which has helped me to reflect on my work and learn about people’s different experiences in their internships. The class is super interesting in large part because it brings together such a wide cross section of Northwestern. We are looking at a variety of film and literary representations of work in order to better understand how we fit in, which as an English major, has been a lot of fun.