For her summer internship, Mariella Isabel Arredondo has returned to her birth country. Arredondo was born in Arequipa, Peru, and moved to the United States in the fourth grade. Arredondo grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, and her experience as a nonnative English speaker sparked her interest in languages at an early age.

“This experience also allowed me to be in tune with the challenges that come from not being a speaker of a dominant national language,” Arredondo says. “Later on, every time I'd return to Peru for a visit I'd notice how there were many native Peruvians who spoke many different indigenous languages [Quechua, Aymara, Ashaninka, etc.,] but yet, at school they had to learn from the beginning in a language [Spanish] different from their native one.”

Arredondo is now a second-year doctoral student in educational policy studies in the School of Education with a concentration in international comparative education at IU Bloomington. When selecting her internship, Arredondo thought of her past experiences and her future goals, which led her to select an internship with the National Directional Office on Bilingual and Intercultural Education (DINEBI) in Lima, Peru, which she began June 8.

During her summer in Peru, Arredondo will work in the intercultural education field. She will analyze the current national bilingual-intercultural education policy, as well as national curricula content in various subjects in order to prepare them to be intercultural. She will organize teacher training sessions, help create teacher training manuals and teaching materials, and attend different bilingual and intercultural education conferences.

Arredondo explains how she obtained her internship, how it will benefit her, and what she hopes to learn this summer.