Summit Prep

At High Tech High Mesa, our junior-year internship—a graduation requirement—is taken seriously, with preparations beginning in late fall for the month-long program held during the final four weeks of school. We're taught how to craft professional emails, refine our résumés, and excel in job interviews. But while the school provides strong scaffolding, it’s ultimately each student’s responsibility for finding and securing a mentor at an internship site that not only resonates with their personal interests but also provides the rigor to make it a true learning experience. When it came time for me to choose my mentor, I didn't necessarily start with the type of work I wanted to do—I started with the kind of person I wanted to learn from and one name stood out immediately: Matt Darling.

As my 9th-grade Humanities teacher, Matt reignited my spark for learning at a time when I was deeply disillusioned with school. He showed me that, with the right approach and the right people, authentic learning can flourish. By my junior year, he had been working at Summit Prep High School for almost two years where he led their Expeditions program—a model where after six weeks of traditional instruction, it's followed by two weeks of off-campus internships or immersive workshops in non-academic fields like barbering, cooking, or programming. His responsibilities as a school administrator were broad and varied, but my decision to work with him had little to do with his official role. I chose him because of the way he shaped me when he was my teacher—and because the lessons he left me with were ones I wanted to carry forward.

When he was teaching, it was clear he loved his craft and fiercely advocated for every student's success. Alongside his teaching partner D. Smith, they transcended the traditional constructs of a classroom teacher and viewed their job not as handing out assignments, but as answering a daily question: What can we do right now to set these students up for success in life? They weren't afraid to throw out their plans, pivot on the spot, or experiment with something completely new if it meant there was a chance that students could grow even further. That relentless willingness to try, adjust, and try again reflected a deeper truth: students change, society changes, and if education doesn't change alongside them, it'll always be falling behind. Succinctly put, to teach well is to experiment often and Matt understood that implicitly.

Because I was interning out of town, I stayed with a family friend and fundraised to cover a month of living expenses. It worked out that Matt could pick me up on his commute to Summit Prep, and one of the unexpected highlights of my internship became the forty-minute drives each way where the conversations we had were as valuable as anything I learned on site.

During my first week, I shadowed him and witnessed school through an administrator's lens for the first time. I sat in on partnership negotiations and closed-door meetings, met the other administrators, and got to know the faculty. I noticed both the parallels to my own school—the open-concept architecture, the innovative programming—and the differences in the priorities they talked about or the distinct norms that governed the social scene. Unsurprisingly, although Matt wasn’t in the classroom, he’d developed good rapport with many students, especially those who tended to linger in hallways or drifted out of class. He understood that their stories mattered more than the numbers on their transcripts, and that's why he earned their respect in ways where other teachers didn’t. I realized that the true gift of educators lies in the heart that they bring to their work, underscoring a truth that pierced me deeply: education is rooted in human connection, and it's the collective growth of people that makes a school worthwhile.

In those first few weeks I focused on surveying students and interviewing teachers about the realities they faced each day. I tried understanding how to better use Mentor Time—a first-period block where in theory teachers could support students individually, but often ended up being a hollow experience with students glued to their phones, teachers typing on their laptops, and some who didn't bother to show up at all. The pressure to dial in academic instruction elbowed out nurturing connection, yet I knew investing in a culture of trust and engagement would better serve students in the long run.

I recognized that the impact of what I could do in four weeks was limited, but I focused my efforts on building assets that could outlast me and to inspire teachers to revisit their own practices and reflect on the people that uplifted them in life. This culminated in an end-of-year professional development workshop that I facilitated which got teachers talking about the entry points for connecting with students and where they saw me model a student-led conference, a practice from my own high school to underscore the aspiration of having students reflect on their own experiences and learning.

The other avenue I explored during my internship was the role that software and data systems play in shaping a school's operations. Even when Matt was a classroom teacher, he experimented with ways to aggregate student feedback and uncover insights to inform his practice. As an administrator, those digital skills became indispensable as he worked with countless databases and documents to manage the complexity of an organization with hundreds of people in it. For me, this was a first foray into software and I began with coding simple spreadsheet formulas—referencing data across columns, matching names with IDs, writing if/else statements, and filtering queries. As tasks grew more complex and more useful, I saw how mastering digital systems could do more than automate routine work—it could unlock the potential of data in ways that opened new possibilities for student learning.

One project that tested me was automating the creation of the slideshow for the school's graduation ceremony. In a spreadsheet, we gathered student names, senior and baby photos, graduating quotes, and links to their chosen background music. Typically, an admin would have to spend hours manually inserting the text and images into each slide, but given that the data and slides were digital, we sought to automate this somehow. With no prior experience in coding or software, I turned to ChatGPT and learned to use Google Apps Script to bring the project to life. Along the way, I picked up the basics of APIs and JavaScript, and figured out how to break down the final goal into small, logical steps that could be handed off to the computer. It took dozens of trials and errors—spotting what went wrong, diagnosing the issue, fixing it, and trying again. Progress came slowly: first I managed to load the elements into the template slide, then I fine-tuned the margins, ensured the aspect ratios stayed intact, and gradually pieced together a system that worked. The satisfaction came when I clicked a button for the umpteenth time and watched the script automatically generate the complete slideshow without issues. The best part wasn't just that it worked—it was that I had created an asset that Matt and future administrators could reuse for years to come. That's when I realized the power of building systems: they don't just solve problems once, they create lasting structures that make future work easier and more efficient which gives them time to focus on what matters more.

I went on to write a few more scripts including one that automated personalized emails to select students for collecting AP exam payments. Each project pushed me further into coding, until I found myself exploring IT, software architecture, and the foundations of how the internet works. Once I had my foot in the door, curiosity took over. I began to see problems through the lens of digital systems and recognized that much of modern work—and life itself—rests on this infrastructure we take for granted. After my internship with Matt ended, I jumped at the chance to volunteer with the IT Director, Tommy at my high school. Over three weeks, I logged nearly 100 hours and engaged with every aspect of his job: maintaining hundreds of student Chromebooks, cleaning projector filters, and building an online ticketing system for facilities requests. The experience gave me a new appreciation for the thankless work that goes unnoticed that makes a school function seamlessly each day. In return for my labor, I not only was treated to amazing lunches, I got advice and guidance from an industry expert on the skills and concepts I could learn to build the kind of digital systems capable of driving lasting educational change.

Both my internship in the Bay Area and my work at my own high school shaped what I want to do in life by demonstrating the power of strong mentorships and the vital importance of systems. Matt reminded me that education is about people—the connections and stories that make us human—while Tommy helped me see the invisible infrastructure that I took for granted for years. I recognize lasting change happens at the intersection of human connection and digital architecture and everywhere I go, I now ask what system could make this better for all people involved? These experiences as they helped shape my ambitions to build a future that lies at the intersection of people and systems where I can keep experimenting, learning, and creating value that will help others thrive long after I've stepped away.