High School Interns in Baltimore’s Literary Scene Prepare for their Future
This is part two of a two-part series featuring the youth programs occurring at Impact Hub Baltimore in Summer 2022. These youth programs are vital due to the loss of learning that students experience when they are not enrolled in school in the summer months. The youth programs we are highlighting in this series provide free access to educational summer programs, amplify student voices, and provide support throughout the school year through internships that develop their career readiness skills. This article details CHARM Lit Mag’s summer youth internship program.
Over the past five weeks, everyone coming through Impact Hub Baltimore (IHB) felt the palpable, buzzing energy radiating from the multiple youth programs hosted in the space. Regional professionals come in and out of the Hub to be guest speakers offering unique, real-world perspectives to high schoolers exploring the spectrum of career possibilities for their future. If you listen you might hear a portion of their insights, or overhear students ask carefully articulated questions. In addition to Dent Education’s Bet on Baltimore internship program, CHARM Lit Mag offers high schoolers another opportunity to build career skills and gain work experience.
Whitney Ward Birenbaum, the Executive Director of CHARM Lit Mag, believes that the summer youth internship program represents a central demonstration of how CHARM supports Baltimore’s youth. The entire mission of Charm Lit Mag is to “support young people as they develop as writers and create opportunities to amplify their voices.” This summer internship program aligns exactly with these aims. It offers an internship for 15 students who are placed all over Baltimore’s literary landscape, from bookstores and media sites to publishing houses. Within the program, students spend three days at their work sites and two days a week the entire cohort convenes at Impact Hub Baltimore. Here, they develop college and career readiness skills and build community. Ward Birenbaum witnessed the growth in leadership skills of the interns as they amass more work experience and advice in this program. She recounts how “we have an incredible group of young people… and really it’s just been cool to see them come together as a cohort and really build that community together. They are all like leaders in their own worlds in Baltimore and at their schools, but we’re really seeing them develop as leaders at their sites, too.” Leadership development is a core goal for the interns in CHARM’s program, and it was wonderful to sit down with a few of these youth leaders to learn about their work sites, their experience with CHARM, and their aspirations for their future after interning this summer.
DJ Grady and Shubhan Bhat, Charm City Books
These two high school students are placed at Charm City Books, a bookstore located in historic Pigtown. Their duties include managing inventory and packaging books for delivery that are sealed with the signature Charm City Books stamp. In addition to their more typical duties, Bhat proclaims that the best part of this internship is the creative aspect. He loves the freedom of expression given through creating social media and graphic design content. In eighth grade, Bhat’s poetry was accepted and published in CHARM Lit Mag, which led him to later become a part of CHARM’s Student Editorial Board. In contrast, this internship constitutes Grady’s first experience with CHARM Lit Mag and workplace settings. He describes how he was referred to the internship program by his older sister: “she said maybe you should try it. You know you might learn something new. And she was right. I learned a lot of new things… and I will be back.” In this case, listening to your older siblings can be beneficial, the valuable time Grady has interned at CHARM revealed strategies that equip him to pursue his career aspirations.
Shawn Ware, Greedy Reads Remington
Shawn Ware’s site is Greedy Reads, a local bookstore with locations in Fells Point and Remington. Her duties include shelving, writing for the weekly newsletter, and helping out with orders. She also has enjoyed offering future events ideas for the bookstore. Ware also got involved with CHARM after an 8th-grade poetry assignment she wrote was submitted and published in their magazine. She continued to write small pieces for CHARM, which influenced her decision to take part in this summer internship. Sharing about what she has learned from this summer, she describes how “it’s helped me realize that there’s a lot of different career choices in writing and publishing like there’s not one specific route you have to go to be great. Like the owner of Greedy Reads, Julia, she actually worked at a publishing house before she became a bookstore owner…So there’s different things she can do than writing and publishing, but it made me realize that maybe I want to go more into creative writing… in the future.” In tandem with the career and college readiness workshops that this internship provides, the hands-on experience gained at work sites provides exposure to many of the different literary careers available.
Tayanita Watson, The Baltimore Banner
This recent high school graduate, who will attend Simmons University in the fall, spent her time before college interning at The Baltimore Banner, a relatively new local newspaper. A lot of the work Watson has been coordinating has been across different social media sites. She has “spent the last five weeks… going through different major social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok promoting the Banner and producing content for them.” Watson’s introduction to CHARM Lit Mag was inspired by the encouragement of her then fifth-grade teacher, a mentor who is still involved in supporting CHARM and cheering on Watson with supportive Facebook comments under her mom’s posts of her. Years later she applied and joined CHARM’s Student Editorial Board. One of the opportunities the Student Editorial Board promoted included this internship program, so she decided to take part this summer. She described her work at the Banner as “a good way to improve my skills in copywriting, specifically if I want to create content for stuff like organizations’ websites and their social media platforms. So that’s definitely been a cool product of my summer.” These internships have also helped experienced writers, such as Watson, to diversify their skill sets by taking on new experiences like writing social media copy and journalistic pieces to diversify their skills for future career aims.
CHARM Cohort Meetings
Another element of the summer internship program is the CHARM cohort meetings on Mondays and Fridays at IHB. Whitney Ward Birenbaum describes the lessons guest speakers offered during cohort sessions and how “they’ve met with people like the editor of Baltimore Magazine and the managing editor of American Short Fiction. They’ve met with different bookstore owners and really learning about what a bookstore is in a community… and they’ve also just been meeting with people learning about networking.” DJ Grady spoke on the importance of this programming describing how this is very valuable information for him as he is only fifteen and is eager for information about college. He emphasizes, “ We also have guest speakers come in and talk to us about their journey, whatever profession they’re doing and we learn a lot.” The accompanying education cohort sessions help interns to reflect on the skills they have learned and factor them into collegiate and professional settings.
Ward Birenbaum stresses the significance of this more in-depth opportunity “for students to just be immersed in this world of publishing.” High school students will be able to practice their new skills acquired from their worksites even before joining the workforce by applying them back to their roles at the CHARM’s magazine, “whether that’s technical things like layout or font choice, or if it’s how to run an editorial meeting and how local organizations are doing that type of thing.”
Ward Birenbaum also describes how much CHARM Lit Mag has loved “being at Impact Hub. It’s been really great to be with other organizations that are supporting youth this summer and just feel the synergy among those organizations.”
Further information and resources about Charm Lit Mag, Impact Hub Baltimore, and the literary sites featured in this story are located below!
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CHARM: Voices of Baltimore Youth Connect with CHARM Lit Mag!!
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Charm: Voices of Baltimore Youth — Home | Facebook Follow CHARM Lit Mag on Facebook!
Charm City Books Connect with Charm City Books
Greedy Reads Connect with Greedy Reads Remington
The Baltimore Banner Connect with the Baltimore Banner
