Camila Rios Picorelli, Sarah Goodman Duffy, and Bitaniya Giday
The Teaching for Change team expanded this summer by three interns with an interest in public policy, education, and history. They are Sarah Goodman Duffy (rising senior, Connecticut College), Bitaniya Giday (University of Washington graduate, 2025 Truman Scholar), and Camila Rios Picorelli (University of Puerto Rico – Piedras graduate, 2025 Truman Scholar). Here are weekly accounts of their activities.
June 2 – 8
Sarah: My first day in the office was Wednesday, June 4th. I helped prepare for the Teach Truth Day of Action that Saturday by creating the boxes of banned books and accompanying resource materials to send out to teachers and other education organizations.
I attended the D.C. Teach Truth Day of Action — a march from the National Museum of African American History and Culture to the National Museum of the American Indian, with stops at the Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art and the Air and Space Museum. It was awesome to get to be a part of a community of local educators and parents who are supporting the #TeachTruth campaign.
June 9 – 15
Sarah: I spent most of the week documenting the Teach Truth Days of Action that took place all over the country. It was cool to see all of the different ways people showed up to support the effort to #TeachTruth.
I also started the nonprofit practicum part of my internship with Keesha and was able to learn more about the structure of nonprofits and specifically about the coalition building that exists and is being developed in the DMV area.
Camila: On Monday, June 9, my first day, I found myself in front of a door with my name on it, and I could not have imagined what awaited me on the other side. The Teaching for Change office is a magical place filled with books, sunbeams, and the most wonderful people I have had the pleasure of meeting.
After a short tour of the building, I got settled at my desk and used the time on that first day to familiarize myself with the Teaching for Change and Teaching Central America websites. The rest of the week, I worked on researching Costa Rica’s history and resources that could help teach its history.
I ended my first week at Teaching for Change by attending the DC/DOX Festival. I watched the documentary The Librarians, which tells the story of the fight against censorship targeting marginalized voices. After the documentary, the director and one of the librarians featured in the film discussed the process of making it. It was an amazing experience, and I recommend everyone watch the documentary.
June 16 – 20
Sarah: Our third and final intern of this summer’s cohort arrived — Bitaniya Giday. We went to Busboys and Poets, a D.C. institution, for an intern lunch with Keesha. That Tuesday, Bitanya, Camila, and I all huddled around my computer for our first Social Justice Books team meeting. We are each writing reviews for our various areas of focus — Haiti, Costa Rica, and LGBTQIA culture. We compared the list of books that we were thinking about reading and reviewing. Wednesday we spent the afternoon constructing photo frames for the Teach Truth Day of Action.
Camila: My second week at Teaching for Change began with showing the new intern Bitaniya the way to the office. To celebrate finally having all the interns of the summer in the office, we went out for lunch at Busboys and Poets to talk and get to know each other. On Wednesday afternoon, Sarah, Bitaniya, and I took over the conference room to use it as a craft studio and create two new photo frames to send to different events around the country. I helped reinforce one of the frames and cut the letters that spelled “Read Banned Books” and “Teach Truth,” while Sarah and Bitaniya decorated the frames. On Friday, Bitaniya and I visited the National Gallery of Art to explore the Elizabeth Catlett exhibition, which highlighted the injustices Black women experience and Catlett’s work in Mexico.
Bitaniya: My first week in the office was magical. As soon as I walked through the door, I was immersed in hundreds of books about the history of social justice movements, from scholarly texts to picture books. The walls were covered in art and posters with messages like “Teach Banned Books.” I felt empowered, excited, and humbled to be among such fierce advocates and educators committed to justice and truth. I met my fellow interns, Sarah and Camila, as well as Teaching for Change staff members Pat, Keesha, and Deborah. I ended the week at the Elizabeth Catlett exhibit with Camilla at the National Gallery of Art. Over the weekend, I attended a gathering at Deborah’s house, where I met and spoke with D.C.-based educators and organizers, including SNCC veterans.
Bitaniya Giday and Brenda Randolph of Africa Access
Bitaniya Giday and Camila Rios Picorelli at the Elizabeth Catlett exhibit at the National Gallery of Art
June 23 – 27
Camila: The week started on Sunday with a visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. I took this opportunity to read some of the books I was thinking of recommending for classrooms on Costa Rica.
I returned to the office on Monday to continue work on my lessons and short biographies for Costa Rica. On Tuesday, we had the pleasure of meeting Lauren Cooper, who talked about her work on the Howard Zinn website and archives. On Wednesday, I left for Puerto Rico for my graduation.
Bitaniya: I delved deeper into my subject matter for this summer, “Teaching About Haiti.” I discovered the incredible plethora of resources available at Teaching for Change to help educators teach Haiti’s history and cultural heritage, including materials to help teach Haitian Kreole, literature, music, food, and Vodou.
I researched materials to add, such as the forgotten revolutionary women figures, like Lieutenant Sanité Bélair, a military strategist who fought to secure her homeland’s independence as part of Toussaint Louverture’s army in the Haitian Revolution. I also read and reviewed books to add to the K-5 readers’ collection on Haitian culture and history. I began to understand the importance of representation in children’s literature as I saw the bright illustrations of Black children, families, food, and culture. I am excited to continue adding books that reflect the everyday experiences of Haitian children and expose other young readers to the Black Diaspora experience.
Sarah: I spent the majority of the week considering the age old question of whether you can separate the art from the artist. I started to research and write the first draft of my review of The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. It’s one of my favorites but I started by reading other people’s reviews of the books and interviews Klune had done on the book.
I learned that Klune had the idea after learning about the “Sixties Scoop,” which took Indigenous children from their families without their consent and placed them in foster homes with white families in order to assimilate them into Western society. Readers criticized Klune for appropriating the experience of Indigenous people for a feel good children’s story and accused him of perpetuating a white savior narrative. Later in the interview, Klune acknowledges that as a cisgender white man, it isn’t his place to co-opt a history that wasn’t his. So instead he writes from the opposite perspective, about Linus, a “cog in a bureaucratic machine — who isn’t necessarily prejudiced” but believes in the rules and regulations to a fault. This opened up a larger conversation about the art versus the artist, and determining whether the impact of The House in the Cerulean Sea to the Queer community makes up for his intention. I didn’t come to any conclusions this week, and posed this question to the other interns.
June 30 – July 3
Camila: I kept busy writing lesson plans for the Teach Central America project, specifically for Costa Rica and their Indigenous population. On Tuesday, Keesha organized an intern meet-and-greet with Lamoussa, the program administrator for the D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice. It was fun as we got to ask questions that we wouldn’t have even thought to, thanks to Keesha’s jar of story prompts. On Wednesday, we met with the Social Justice Books team to discuss the books we had been reading. Keesha also gave us an introduction to Airtable and how to make sure every book entry is done correctly.
Sarah: Monday and Tuesday I worked on the list of books to recommend for the LGBTQIA book list. I’ve found a gap in literature for Queer women, especially young Queer girls. I couldn’t help but think about how having books like the ones I was researching would have been such a game changer for middle school me.
That Wednesday I spent museum hopping. I had a lovely walk through the National Gallery of Art that morning and spent most of the time trying to hunt down Alice Neel’s Hartley painting.
Bitaniya and I went to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I got the chance to see my friend from school who was working as a venue manager for the event. We walked around and heard parts of the various panels and programs. Then we went to the National Museum of the American Indian where I got fry bread tacos (and saw the Fry Bread book displayed!) and we joined the Social Justice Books meeting online. There I talked more about the TJ Klune book I was grappling with and got feedback.
Thursday I checked in again with Keesha about the nonprofit management part of my internship experience. I attended a Spur Local webinar on implementing change in nonprofits, which I got to debrief and discuss with Keesha. It has been invaluable to hear about her experience working with Teaching for Change and pick her brain on nonprofit trends and issues, especially in the DMV area.
July 7 – July 11
Camila: My week was filled with meetings and events. The week started with a marketing meeting, which was very interesting as we discussed research done by Harmony Labs about how diverse types of people are worried about different aspects of education and how media and the narratives constructed can impact their views of the issues in education. We examined how to use this information to our benefit and talked about what we could do differently in terms of our news and Instagram posts. On Tuesday, Bitaniya and I accompanied Lamoussa and Keesha to American University’s School of Education for a presentation they gave to the Learning, Unlearning, Coherence Cohort. The best part was watching Keesha use the D.C. Activist Meet and Greet Lesson with the cohort. I could see firsthand how successful the interactive approach to instruction can be. On Friday, I provided tech support for a presentation given by Jonathan Peraza Campos at the MAS Teachers’ Academy 2025.
Sarah: Our intern cohort attended two staff meetings. The first was on communications and marketing for Teaching for Change. We discussed two articles from Harmony Labs on narrative impact and exploring how different audiences engage with stories about K-12 education. The second was a regular all-staff meeting. The interns got to share about the highlights of our experience and we heard updates from the latest board meeting.
July 14 – July 18
Bitaniya: The Teaching for Change staff encourage us to explore D.C’s many museums and cultural institutions during our internship. This week, Keesha booked a tour for us at the Go-Go Museum & Cafe in Anacostia. The interns and I took the train over, and we were met by the founder and CEO, Ronald Moten, who shared the process of establishing the museum and the significance of the go-go legacy to him. My favorite part of the tour was the exhibit on oral histories conducted by the Library of Congress, which explored how Chuck Brown invented the go-go sound and its name.
(l-r) Bitaniya, Camila, Crosby (tour guide), Lamousa, Sarah, and Keesha in the Secret Garden Pavilion of the Go-Go Museum & Cafe
Our tour guide played the drums for us to demonstrate how West African and Latin American traditions inspire the sound of go-go music.
Afterwards, we (the interns) headed to the Frederick Douglass House for a guided tour. I was surprised to learn that his house featured wallpaper of tropical trees, representing Douglass’s time in Haiti as the U.S. Ambassador from 1889-1891. He also had a picture displayed of his time in Saint-Domingue, as well as one commemorating his friendship with a Haitian diplomat. It was clear that the time spent in Haiti had a profound impact on Douglass’s life. After the tour, Camila and Sarah headed home, while I stayed behind to explore Anacostia.
Sarah: This week was booked and busy! Monday I got the chance to get coffee with Deborah and ask her more about her experience as executive director for Teaching for Change. It has been invaluable to get the perspective of Deborah and Keesha who have been able to point me in the direction of various nonprofit resources, including Chiara Frechette who is the nonprofit programs director at Spur Local. I was able to meet with her on Wednesday and pick her brain on nonprofit partnerships. Friday I had the opportunity to attend the Teaching to Transgress Conference at the Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities at University of Maryland. They had amazing speakers, including Dr. Tamisha Ponder and Jessica Rucker. I went to a workshop facilitated by Tony Louis on cultivating joy in the classroom that was co-taught by two of his former students. During lunch I helped Deborah at the table with resources from D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice (DCAESJ) and the Zinn Education Project. I connected with other like-minded educators and advocates.
Camila: My sixth week at TfC was fun. On Tuesday, we had the privilege to visit the Go-Go Museum, where we explored the origins of go-go music, its influence on D.C. and pop culture, and how it has evolved throughout time. One of the highlights of the museum was finding Teaching for Change in the timeline of the history of go-go music and our program, Teach to the Beat. I enjoyed my time at the museum, and as someone who had never heard of go-go music before, I learned a lot. After the Go-Go Museum, we walked to the Frederick Douglass House to enjoy a tour of it. Two of my biggest takeaways from the tour were that Douglass had way more money than I could have imagined and that he lived in a beautiful home. Later on that week, Sarah, Bitaniya, and I took an afternoon to film a reel for the Teaching for Change Instagram. We had a lot of fun filming a tour of the office and showcasing our favorite spots.
July 21 – July 25
Sarah: I started writing my review for Miss Rita, Mystery Reader and did a deep dive into Drag Story Hour and anti-drag legislation. Drag Story Hour is a nonprofit organization that hosts drag storytimes around the country. Their mission is to capture “the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and give kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.” The books they read are written by or about Queer people or people of color. The narrative that drag queens are indoctrinating or sexualizing children is absurd. Drag queens who participate in these events seek to bring the joy of diverse literature to young children and to make a living. Reading and reviewing Miss Rita, Mystery Reader was a wonderful way to celebrate the art of drag.
Camila: The only meeting I had this week was an intern check-in with Keesha. The check-ins are helpful; providing a chance to talk with someone more experienced who can give you guidance on how to proceed with different projects at work. Thanks to that meeting and the lack of other activities during the week, I was able to complete my biographies of important Costa Ricans and my lesson plans, one about Camilo Mejia and the other about the Indigenous population of Costa Rica and their fight to reclaim their land. At the end of the week, I sent all my projects to one of our Teach Central America advisors.
Bitaniya: I worked on a critique on how Haiti’s history is portrayed in World History textbooks for high school students. With the help of Mimi from the Zinn Education Project, I was able to find open-sourced textbooks by prominent textbook publishing companies such as McDougal Littell, Pearson, and Prentice Hall. I was surprised to learn how the narrative about Haiti’s history was skewed to portray the country as dysfunctional, violent, and poor, while making little effort to contextualize these conditions with the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and foreign intervention. It deepened my appreciation for Teaching for Change’s work in correcting these inaccurate historical narratives and ensuring the voices of marginalized people are uplifted to provide a deeper and more critical picture of history.
July 28 – August 1
Camila: My eighth and final week at Teaching for Change was peaceful. On Monday, I attended a marketing meeting that I found particularly interesting. We examined the data and statistics gathered from visitors to the TFC website, which included information on how visitors found our site, the amount of time they spent there, and the types of projects that captured their interest. The idea for this meeting was to analyze the data and brainstorm ways to use that information to promote our projects in a more efficient manner. We also had a meeting about the new Social Justice Books website, where we got a preview of the design and were able to provide feedback on its appearance. Additionally, I completed two book lists for the Airtable project this week: “Teaching About Panama” and “Teaching About Honduras.”
Looking back on my experience this summer, I’m so glad I took the opportunity and did the internship. It has been an amazing experience in which I have learned a lot about Costa Rica, D.C., and how nonprofits work. I also had the opportunity to work alongside some of the most intelligent and fun people I have ever met. I really enjoyed my time at the office in D.C., and I’m sad to see this time come to an end.
Bitaniya Giday, Sarah Goodman Duffy, Toni Blackman, Nancy Raquel Mirabal, and Keesha Ceran
Sarah: This was my last week in the office. Monday was National Intern Day and we had lunch with performance artist Toni Blackman and Teaching for Change board member Nancy Raquel Mirabal. Keesha asked what is one thing that you learned and one thing that could have been better. Bitaniya and I had the same feedback which is that we wished the office had an espresso maker. Although, I did have the opportunity to get to know Bitaniya from our daily coffee runs which I’m incredibly grateful for.
This summer I was able to learn about nonprofit structures and partnerships from Keesha and Deborah. They are such a wealth of knowledge and I loved hearing about their experiences within the nonprofit realm. I also think that I have become a more well rounded Queer person this summer through the research I did for the LGBTQIA Social Justice Book List. I learned more about Queer history and read books that I wish I had as a young Queer person.
2025 Summer Intern Blog
The Teaching for Change team expanded this summer by three interns with an interest in public policy, education, and history. They are Sarah Goodman Duffy (rising senior, Connecticut College), Bitaniya Giday (University of Washington graduate, 2025 Truman Scholar), and Camila Rios Picorelli (University of Puerto Rico – Piedras graduate, 2025 Truman Scholar). Here are weekly accounts of their activities.
June 2 – 8
Sarah: My first day in the office was Wednesday, June 4th. I helped prepare for the Teach Truth Day of Action that Saturday by creating the boxes of banned books and accompanying resource materials to send out to teachers and other education organizations.
These boxes included Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff, Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Mailard, and Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race by Jessica Ralli and Megan Madison.
I attended the D.C. Teach Truth Day of Action — a march from the National Museum of African American History and Culture to the National Museum of the American Indian, with stops at the Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art and the Air and Space Museum. It was awesome to get to be a part of a community of local educators and parents who are supporting the #TeachTruth campaign.
June 9 – 15
Sarah: I spent most of the week documenting the Teach Truth Days of Action that took place all over the country. It was cool to see all of the different ways people showed up to support the effort to #TeachTruth.
I also started the nonprofit practicum part of my internship with Keesha and was able to learn more about the structure of nonprofits and specifically about the coalition building that exists and is being developed in the DMV area.
Camila: On Monday, June 9, my first day, I found myself in front of a door with my name on it, and I could not have imagined what awaited me on the other side. The Teaching for Change office is a magical place filled with books, sunbeams, and the most wonderful people I have had the pleasure of meeting.
After a short tour of the building, I got settled at my desk and used the time on that first day to familiarize myself with the Teaching for Change and Teaching Central America websites. The rest of the week, I worked on researching Costa Rica’s history and resources that could help teach its history.
I ended my first week at Teaching for Change by attending the DC/DOX Festival. I watched the documentary The Librarians, which tells the story of the fight against censorship targeting marginalized voices. After the documentary, the director and one of the librarians featured in the film discussed the process of making it. It was an amazing experience, and I recommend everyone watch the documentary.
June 16 – 20
Sarah: Our third and final intern of this summer’s cohort arrived — Bitaniya Giday. We went to Busboys and Poets, a D.C. institution, for an intern lunch with Keesha. That Tuesday, Bitanya, Camila, and I all huddled around my computer for our first Social Justice Books team meeting. We are each writing reviews for our various areas of focus — Haiti, Costa Rica, and LGBTQIA culture. We compared the list of books that we were thinking about reading and reviewing. Wednesday we spent the afternoon constructing photo frames for the Teach Truth Day of Action.
Camila: My second week at Teaching for Change began with showing the new intern Bitaniya the way to the office. To celebrate finally having all the interns of the summer in the office, we went out for lunch at Busboys and Poets to talk and get to know each other. On Wednesday afternoon, Sarah, Bitaniya, and I took over the conference room to use it as a craft studio and create two new photo frames to send to different events around the country. I helped reinforce one of the frames and cut the letters that spelled “Read Banned Books” and “Teach Truth,” while Sarah and Bitaniya decorated the frames. On Friday, Bitaniya and I visited the National Gallery of Art to explore the Elizabeth Catlett exhibition, which highlighted the injustices Black women experience and Catlett’s work in Mexico.
Bitaniya: My first week in the office was magical. As soon as I walked through the door, I was immersed in hundreds of books about the history of social justice movements, from scholarly texts to picture books. The walls were covered in art and posters with messages like “Teach Banned Books.” I felt empowered, excited, and humbled to be among such fierce advocates and educators committed to justice and truth. I met my fellow interns, Sarah and Camila, as well as Teaching for Change staff members Pat, Keesha, and Deborah. I ended the week at the Elizabeth Catlett exhibit with Camilla at the National Gallery of Art. Over the weekend, I attended a gathering at Deborah’s house, where I met and spoke with D.C.-based educators and organizers, including SNCC veterans.
June 23 – 27
Camila: The week started on Sunday with a visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. I took this opportunity to read some of the books I was thinking of recommending for classrooms on Costa Rica.
I returned to the office on Monday to continue work on my lessons and short biographies for Costa Rica. On Tuesday, we had the pleasure of meeting Lauren Cooper, who talked about her work on the Howard Zinn website and archives. On Wednesday, I left for Puerto Rico for my graduation.
Bitaniya: I delved deeper into my subject matter for this summer, “Teaching About Haiti.” I discovered the incredible plethora of resources available at Teaching for Change to help educators teach Haiti’s history and cultural heritage, including materials to help teach Haitian Kreole, literature, music, food, and Vodou.
I researched materials to add, such as the forgotten revolutionary women figures, like Lieutenant Sanité Bélair, a military strategist who fought to secure her homeland’s independence as part of Toussaint Louverture’s army in the Haitian Revolution. I also read and reviewed books to add to the K-5 readers’ collection on Haitian culture and history. I began to understand the importance of representation in children’s literature as I saw the bright illustrations of Black children, families, food, and culture. I am excited to continue adding books that reflect the everyday experiences of Haitian children and expose other young readers to the Black Diaspora experience.
Sarah: I spent the majority of the week considering the age old question of whether you can separate the art from the artist. I started to research and write the first draft of my review of The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. It’s one of my favorites but I started by reading other people’s reviews of the books and interviews Klune had done on the book.
I learned that Klune had the idea after learning about the “Sixties Scoop,” which took Indigenous children from their families without their consent and placed them in foster homes with white families in order to assimilate them into Western society. Readers criticized Klune for appropriating the experience of Indigenous people for a feel good children’s story and accused him of perpetuating a white savior narrative. Later in the interview, Klune acknowledges that as a cisgender white man, it isn’t his place to co-opt a history that wasn’t his. So instead he writes from the opposite perspective, about Linus, a “cog in a bureaucratic machine — who isn’t necessarily prejudiced” but believes in the rules and regulations to a fault. This opened up a larger conversation about the art versus the artist, and determining whether the impact of The House in the Cerulean Sea to the Queer community makes up for his intention. I didn’t come to any conclusions this week, and posed this question to the other interns.
June 30 – July 3
Camila: I kept busy writing lesson plans for the Teach Central America project, specifically for Costa Rica and their Indigenous population. On Tuesday, Keesha organized an intern meet-and-greet with Lamoussa, the program administrator for the D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice. It was fun as we got to ask questions that we wouldn’t have even thought to, thanks to Keesha’s jar of story prompts. On Wednesday, we met with the Social Justice Books team to discuss the books we had been reading. Keesha also gave us an introduction to Airtable and how to make sure every book entry is done correctly.
Sarah: Monday and Tuesday I worked on the list of books to recommend for the LGBTQIA book list. I’ve found a gap in literature for Queer women, especially young Queer girls. I couldn’t help but think about how having books like the ones I was researching would have been such a game changer for middle school me.
That Wednesday I spent museum hopping. I had a lovely walk through the National Gallery of Art that morning and spent most of the time trying to hunt down Alice Neel’s Hartley painting.
Bitaniya and I went to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I got the chance to see my friend from school who was working as a venue manager for the event. We walked around and heard parts of the various panels and programs. Then we went to the National Museum of the American Indian where I got fry bread tacos (and saw the Fry Bread book displayed!) and we joined the Social Justice Books meeting online. There I talked more about the TJ Klune book I was grappling with and got feedback.
Thursday I checked in again with Keesha about the nonprofit management part of my internship experience. I attended a Spur Local webinar on implementing change in nonprofits, which I got to debrief and discuss with Keesha. It has been invaluable to hear about her experience working with Teaching for Change and pick her brain on nonprofit trends and issues, especially in the DMV area.
July 7 – July 11
Camila: My week was filled with meetings and events. The week started with a marketing meeting, which was very interesting as we discussed research done by Harmony Labs about how diverse types of people are worried about different aspects of education and how media and the narratives constructed can impact their views of the issues in education. We examined how to use this information to our benefit and talked about what we could do differently in terms of our news and Instagram posts. On Tuesday, Bitaniya and I accompanied Lamoussa and Keesha to American University’s School of Education for a presentation they gave to the Learning, Unlearning, Coherence Cohort. The best part was watching Keesha use the D.C. Activist Meet and Greet Lesson with the cohort. I could see firsthand how successful the interactive approach to instruction can be. On Friday, I provided tech support for a presentation given by Jonathan Peraza Campos at the MAS Teachers’ Academy 2025.
Sarah: Our intern cohort attended two staff meetings. The first was on communications and marketing for Teaching for Change. We discussed two articles from Harmony Labs on narrative impact and exploring how different audiences engage with stories about K-12 education. The second was a regular all-staff meeting. The interns got to share about the highlights of our experience and we heard updates from the latest board meeting.
July 14 – July 18
Bitaniya: The Teaching for Change staff encourage us to explore D.C’s many museums and cultural institutions during our internship. This week, Keesha booked a tour for us at the Go-Go Museum & Cafe in Anacostia. The interns and I took the train over, and we were met by the founder and CEO, Ronald Moten, who shared the process of establishing the museum and the significance of the go-go legacy to him. My favorite part of the tour was the exhibit on oral histories conducted by the Library of Congress, which explored how Chuck Brown invented the go-go sound and its name.
Our tour guide played the drums for us to demonstrate how West African and Latin American traditions inspire the sound of go-go music.
Afterwards, we (the interns) headed to the Frederick Douglass House for a guided tour. I was surprised to learn that his house featured wallpaper of tropical trees, representing Douglass’s time in Haiti as the U.S. Ambassador from 1889-1891. He also had a picture displayed of his time in Saint-Domingue, as well as one commemorating his friendship with a Haitian diplomat. It was clear that the time spent in Haiti had a profound impact on Douglass’s life. After the tour, Camila and Sarah headed home, while I stayed behind to explore Anacostia.
Sarah: This week was booked and busy! Monday I got the chance to get coffee with Deborah and ask her more about her experience as executive director for Teaching for Change. It has been invaluable to get the perspective of Deborah and Keesha who have been able to point me in the direction of various nonprofit resources, including Chiara Frechette who is the nonprofit programs director at Spur Local. I was able to meet with her on Wednesday and pick her brain on nonprofit partnerships. Friday I had the opportunity to attend the Teaching to Transgress Conference at the Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities at University of Maryland. They had amazing speakers, including Dr. Tamisha Ponder and Jessica Rucker. I went to a workshop facilitated by Tony Louis on cultivating joy in the classroom that was co-taught by two of his former students. During lunch I helped Deborah at the table with resources from D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice (DCAESJ) and the Zinn Education Project. I connected with other like-minded educators and advocates.
Camila: My sixth week at TfC was fun. On Tuesday, we had the privilege to visit the Go-Go Museum, where we explored the origins of go-go music, its influence on D.C. and pop culture, and how it has evolved throughout time. One of the highlights of the museum was finding Teaching for Change in the timeline of the history of go-go music and our program, Teach to the Beat. I enjoyed my time at the museum, and as someone who had never heard of go-go music before, I learned a lot. After the Go-Go Museum, we walked to the Frederick Douglass House to enjoy a tour of it. Two of my biggest takeaways from the tour were that Douglass had way more money than I could have imagined and that he lived in a beautiful home. Later on that week, Sarah, Bitaniya, and I took an afternoon to film a reel for the Teaching for Change Instagram. We had a lot of fun filming a tour of the office and showcasing our favorite spots.
July 21 – July 25
Sarah: I started writing my review for Miss Rita, Mystery Reader and did a deep dive into Drag Story Hour and anti-drag legislation. Drag Story Hour is a nonprofit organization that hosts drag storytimes around the country. Their mission is to capture “the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and give kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.” The books they read are written by or about Queer people or people of color. The narrative that drag queens are indoctrinating or sexualizing children is absurd. Drag queens who participate in these events seek to bring the joy of diverse literature to young children and to make a living. Reading and reviewing Miss Rita, Mystery Reader was a wonderful way to celebrate the art of drag.
Camila: The only meeting I had this week was an intern check-in with Keesha. The check-ins are helpful; providing a chance to talk with someone more experienced who can give you guidance on how to proceed with different projects at work. Thanks to that meeting and the lack of other activities during the week, I was able to complete my biographies of important Costa Ricans and my lesson plans, one about Camilo Mejia and the other about the Indigenous population of Costa Rica and their fight to reclaim their land. At the end of the week, I sent all my projects to one of our Teach Central America advisors.
Bitaniya: I worked on a critique on how Haiti’s history is portrayed in World History textbooks for high school students. With the help of Mimi from the Zinn Education Project, I was able to find open-sourced textbooks by prominent textbook publishing companies such as McDougal Littell, Pearson, and Prentice Hall. I was surprised to learn how the narrative about Haiti’s history was skewed to portray the country as dysfunctional, violent, and poor, while making little effort to contextualize these conditions with the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and foreign intervention. It deepened my appreciation for Teaching for Change’s work in correcting these inaccurate historical narratives and ensuring the voices of marginalized people are uplifted to provide a deeper and more critical picture of history.
July 28 – August 1
Camila: My eighth and final week at Teaching for Change was peaceful. On Monday, I attended a marketing meeting that I found particularly interesting. We examined the data and statistics gathered from visitors to the TFC website, which included information on how visitors found our site, the amount of time they spent there, and the types of projects that captured their interest. The idea for this meeting was to analyze the data and brainstorm ways to use that information to promote our projects in a more efficient manner. We also had a meeting about the new Social Justice Books website, where we got a preview of the design and were able to provide feedback on its appearance. Additionally, I completed two book lists for the Airtable project this week: “Teaching About Panama” and “Teaching About Honduras.”
Looking back on my experience this summer, I’m so glad I took the opportunity and did the internship. It has been an amazing experience in which I have learned a lot about Costa Rica, D.C., and how nonprofits work. I also had the opportunity to work alongside some of the most intelligent and fun people I have ever met. I really enjoyed my time at the office in D.C., and I’m sad to see this time come to an end.
Sarah: This was my last week in the office. Monday was National Intern Day and we had lunch with performance artist Toni Blackman and Teaching for Change board member Nancy Raquel Mirabal. Keesha asked what is one thing that you learned and one thing that could have been better. Bitaniya and I had the same feedback which is that we wished the office had an espresso maker. Although, I did have the opportunity to get to know Bitaniya from our daily coffee runs which I’m incredibly grateful for.
This summer I was able to learn about nonprofit structures and partnerships from Keesha and Deborah. They are such a wealth of knowledge and I loved hearing about their experiences within the nonprofit realm. I also think that I have become a more well rounded Queer person this summer through the research I did for the LGBTQIA Social Justice Book List. I learned more about Queer history and read books that I wish I had as a young Queer person.
Posted: July 2, 2025