Social Work Course Reflection

While serving in schools in the Monterey peninsula, I noticed the vast cultural differences between my students and I; thus, the resulting gaps in my understanding of their experiences and struggles. For this reason, I have taken initiative to further my cultural competencies. I traveled to Spain to immerse myself in a new culture and language. I joined the Community Engagement Committee at my current job, which allows me to organize and coordinate guest speakers who facilitate discussions on social justice issues. I take part in community table talks regarding race, religion, and inclusivity, and actively seek out cultural festivities in my community so I may better understand my students’ experiences. I have learned how to reflect on areas in my work that can be improved and implement changes accordingly. The cultural knowledge I have gained from these experiences will help me excel in this program and ultimately the students I

Having the opportunity to hear from a variety of professionals in the social work field was the perfect addition to our course syllabus as many of my classmates are approaching their helping careers. For me personally, these speakers were able to reinforce what I desire to study during graduate school. The speakers were also able to provide me with different avenues I may want to study or pursue for a job opportunity once I have my masters degree.

This was a very eye opening class for me. Coming from a mental health counselling background I have to admit it is a major difference in how social workers operate versus therapist. In this essay I will reflected on how this social work class has genuinely affected me, my strengths and weaknesses, and what I have taken away from this class. I always gain a great deal of satisfaction from helping others. I remember from middle school on through adulthood I was the go to person. If a person had an issue or needed to talk. I was the voice of reasoning. I was the one able to grab hold of certain resources if someone was in need

During this time, I expect to learn and gain hands-on social work experience in the field. Also, I want to learn how to use and apply social theory into my practice. I want to build and gain the relationship with my field/task supervisors and colleagues. Moreover, I want to gain the opportunity to develop the personal and professional identity. Lastly, I will learn how to use my experience from my practicum setting to practice in the social work field in the future.

Understanding a community is essential when planning for instruction. My current placement is at Kofa High School which is a located in an urban community –Yuma, Arizona- with an estimated population of 93,000 people. It is fundamental to recognize that Yuma’s population mostly consists of Hispanic and White people. Although English is mostly spoken in this area, Spanish is commonly heard in the community due to the high Hispanic population.

In this essay I will discuss what learning from K216 materials has been useful to me whilst working with vulnerable and/or disadvantaged service users in my student placement, and what learning I have applied to my practice. Throughout I will look at how my learning informed what I decided to do, how I went about doing this and my understanding of the practice. I will discuss learning in respect of two areas of social work, which are ‘Communication’ and ‘Working collaboratively’. For ‘Communication’ I will focus on communication with service users with disabilities and/ or additional needs and I will explore a case of a mother who I had a telephone call with who was in crisis and in a highly emotional state. With ‘Working collaboratively’,

In order to gain a better understanding of the role of a good syllabus in teaching, I present my critique of the syllabus of the course SOWK 732: Social work practice with organization and communities. Before starting the critique of the syllabus, it is necessary to review the purpose and characteristics of a syllabus. A syllabus is not only a contract between the instructor and students (Step to a good syllabus, n.d.; Cullen, 2013), but also an attempt to improve the learner-centered academic experience. With these purposes, I consider a good syllabus as one of the basic communication channels between the instructor and students. Thus, this communication channel should be clear, specific, and informative in the expectations, objectives, and

This study involved the difficulties of adding curriculum to an already crowed social work curriculum and ways to add more training for students while not adding to the overall curriculum workload. Being such this problem is one of training and not necessarily a problem to be resolved by a human service professional.

Setting a boundary is an important core value in the field of social work. According to the Social Work Code of Ethics, “social workers should provide and represent themselves as competent only within the boundaries of their education, training, license, certification, consultation received, supervised experience, or other relevant professional experience” (Code of Ethics of the NASW). Professional helpers are generally compassionate people, but they also need to recognize the value of setting limits. This was the case when I worked as an adjunct instructor, which included providing individual tutoring. Sara Towns (name changed), a student and distant cousin, evoked the possible clouding of boundaries. For new social workers, this kind of reflection may be helpful as they define their roles. Through a series of professional and personal experiences with Sara, I learned that boundaries must be maintained to foster a positive relationship and prevent potential conflicts.

Social Worker’s must undertake “relevant training to maintain and improve your knowledge and skills and contributing to the learning and development of others” (SSSC, 2009 section 6.8). The requirement of continued learning is fifteen days which can consist of courses, reading

The course provides has provided me with a great understanding and knowledge a social workers role and a families function, the

At the beginning of the course, I feel that I was naive about my professional knowledge about the field of social work. I had a false knowledge about what the field entailed

In this reflection essay, I will demonstrate my learning experience in this counseling session. I will talk about my strength, weakness, verbal, nonverbal expression, including improvements needed to become more efficient in the social work profession. I will also speak about a learning tool called process recording in Social work profession. This process recording was done with the help, with my fantastic Daughter Kendra Shelton as the client and my incredible husband Michael McVay as Video Recorder /producer.

For my flexibility, it says that I take a highly flexible approach to life and are likely very open to new and changing ideas and circumstances. I agree with this point a lot, because throughout my life so far I have had to change things that I have done last minute to accomplish something else that was going on. Also, it says that I tend to embrace change in school, work and life in general. I agree with this too, because during school I always got excited when I got a new class because it was something different. Lastly, it says that flexibility allows me to be open to learning new concepts and exploring differing points of view. This one is a little harder for me to completely agree to, because yes I am open to new ideas but not all the time when exploring new concepts and points of view. One example is when I was suppose to tutor a girl in my high school and she was having problems finding a time that would work for both of us. I came up with a time during school that we could meet and I told her that she could come up with any day Monday through Friday at the time that we had determined would work best for both of us.

“Facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experiences or education, the theoretical or practical understanding of the subject. What is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information. True, justified belief; certain understanding, as opposed to opinion. Awareness or familiarity gained by experiences of a fact or situation.” (google, 2014)