Learning Experience
Completing this writing course helped me grow phenomenally as a beginning social worker. This is that it gave me the opportunity to develop strong professional writing habits that will be significant when advocating for clients through grant proposals, assessments, and/or literature reviews etc. As a student enrolled in this course, I learned that social workers should write professionally, regardless of specialization, because it often reflects how a social worker advocates for their clients. According to Folk and Ross (2001) “Social workers who can write a well-constructed report, a clear description of a client, or a persuasive memorandum or letter, are more effective in serving the interests of their client systems”
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Also, while enrolled in this course I learned that jargon should be avoided when writing professionally. O’Hara (2015) states that “Writers often mistakenly believe using a big word when a simple one will do is a sign of intelligence. It’s not” (p. 3). It is necessary for social workers to avoid jargon as much as possible when writing to avoid confusing their readers and misleading them in an unintended direction of thought. Lastly, the one thing that surprised me was that word count is important when quoting. This is that throughout my education I was never informed that quotations require a certain formatting style if they succeed the word count limit. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2016) states, “If the quotation comprises 40 or more words, display it in a free-standing block of text and omit the quotation marks” (p. 171). This was a learning experience I will remember when quoting sentences from different resources because it required practice, on several occasions, so I could learn the proper way to quote sentences with more than 40 words. Overall, my learning experience in this course was beneficial and helped me to identify my strengths and weakness in terms of …show more content…
The advantage of mind-mapping is that it allows me to establish the main idea and connect any related ideas to it. This helps me group the ideas together so I can develop an outline that introduces a thesis statement along with the paragraphs that support the thesis/argument. Outlining my thoughts and ideas ensures my ideas are relative to paragraph topics so paragraphs in the body of my literature are supporting the thesis statement. Using these methods before putting my ideas into words will make it easier for me to write professionally while delivering services to
Being given the opportunity to intern with the staff at the Family Resource Center in the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) has been a tremendous learning experience thus far. The opportunity has truly surpassed my expectation of what I imagined the journey of internship would be like and how it would help me to evolve into the professional arena as a social worker. I see myself transforming and viewing the community in which I live, the clients served, those deprived, and the tremendous job that we as social workers are tasked with to advocate for those in need from a more open-minded perspective. By enhancing and developing my personal and professional skills, such as active listening, observation, and professional comportment, I will be
As my role of becoming a justice based social worker and being exposed to new knowledge about oppression and privilege, I want to focus on the topic of race and White privilege to strengthen my knowledge and the knowledge of others on multidimensional levels. There are a few reasons why I have chosen an action plan focused on race and White privilege. I believe it to be a longstanding issue in our society, it is rarely discussed because of the uncomfortable territory that comes along with it, and more importantly, I would like to expand my awareness of how race affects individuals on different systemic levels and my awareness of my privileges can affect my role as a social worker. “Teaching about White privilege is fundamental to understanding
This paper is about a reflection on a class interview for a senior social worker. The teacher gave every student ten minutes for this interview. The students did not have an idea of what their situation was about until couple minutes before the interview. This paper will focus on the limits of confidentiality for the client, potential assessment for the client, engagement with the client, and evaluation of the social worker.
Social work is the profession of helping a variety of different people in all aspects of life. For example, as we discussed in class by “creating social conditions favorable for that goal.” Clients are worthy of the decisions they make, it might not always be the best one, but we need them to be able to have self-determination for seeing they have control in their life. Therefore, we need to be sure that everyone has the fairness of having relationships between people. Including you as the helper and outside resources that they might have they can rely on. Advocacy is important because we need to be the voice that clients don’t have and help support the needs that need to be appointed. Every client that we help has the chance to achieve their
Social Workers are very important to everyday life. They are the ones that help people in need when they have nobody else to turn too. Also, they provide resources and better understanding of predicaments that you could be experiencing. I will reflect on how the class has affected me, my own experiences and how some theories have connected to my life experiences, and lastly, if the class helped toward my major. This class is important for someone that wants to become a social worker and wants to learn about the different theories used. Also, learning about me during this process of completing this class is fun and a way to see if the social work profession is right for me. There was many theories explained throughout this class but many will not be said because it wasn’t the main points that I was trying to get across. There are two tools that are used that can help a social worker organize a client’s life: Bubble map and Briefcase exercise. There are so many different ways a social worker can help a client deal with their problems and come up with a solution. It is up to that social worker to identify the client’s problem and see what theory fits.
The basis of this assignment was to create a further and more in depth understanding of my chosen field, social work. Social workers aid and support individuals, groups, and communities through difficult times and ensure that vulnerable people are safeguarded from harm. Without them our nation would not have the proper support to establish order and relations in society. I explored the numerous types of social working jobs, ranging from Child, Family, and School social workers, Mental Health and Substance Abuse social workers, to social workers in Administration, Policy, and Research. I provided all of the educational requirements necessary to become a social worker, along with the benefits of acquiring a higher degree. In addition, I included the average salary of an entry level social worker and the average salary for a social worker with a Master’s degree or other professional licensure. I provided all essential information one would need to know before entering the field of social work. For example, what the job requires beyond what you can learn in a classroom. Patience, understanding and empathy are a few of the many imperative personality traits a social work must possess. Along with the facts and statistics I incorporated into my paper, I also included a personal section explaining why I chose to enter this field.
The one common passion that all social workers have is the ability to fight for other individual’s human rights and justice. What society often forgets is the fact that every human being in the world has human rights, but everywhere you go there are people mistreated and considered disposable. In a world that has a vast amount of cultures and customs, it is pertinent that social workers become aware of the diversity that exists. Social workers are expected to be culturally competent, empathetic, and sensitive to those that might be different from us. Social workers are the instruments to change the lives of people in mirco, meso, and macro settings. Social workers, especially those who are therapists or case managers, need to have a global perspective while working in the field. Social with global perspectives will help social workers empathize with their clients, teach them skills that can be applied in the field, and understand how one policy in one country can affect others.
To provide effective social services, a social work graduate must possess a multitude of knowledge, skills and abilities. This will be a reflective paper on everything that I know for sure as a student of social work who is about to go into the world of work.
I strongly considered a career in social work after completing my undergrad school; my yearning for helping and advocating for all children of the world led me to Barry University. With increased knowledge in the profession of social work, I realized, I have been absent minded in the numerous roles that a social worker plays. As advocators, counselors, mediators, and researchers, social workers uphold principles and core values written within the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics. Social workers mission is entrenched in the Code of Ethics. “Code of Ethics set fourth these values, principles, and standards to guide social workers’ conduct” (The National Association, “n. d.”). Service, Social Justice, Dignity
Working with others and improving own learning and performance are highly essential skills in social work. In this essay I will reflect on how well I have developed these two skills and what I need to do to improve them.
Becoming a social worker would be the greatest and rewarding achievement I could ever accomplish. The social work profession facilitates social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2016, para. 2).The area I’m interested to work in is Child Abuse and young people with disability because of personal experience. One of my major inspiration through her quote is (Mother Teresa 2001) “If you can 't feed a hundred people, then feed just one". I connect with this quote because I know I can never change the whole world but I can make a different in one-person life. After I completed year 12 of high school education I wasn’t sure is social work was for me. I decided to do a diploma of community service to get more idea of what social work do. Studying a diploma of community motivated me more to pursue a career as a social worker. This essay will reflect on my past experience and the things motivated me the most to become social work practitioner. This reflection will discuss the values, beliefs as social worker.
Social work practice has become a vital part of our society. They are found in almost every aspect of our community as well as our schools. Social workers are problem solvers that help people deal with daily issues that may become problems that affect them. As our society becomes more challenging, social workers help bridge the gaps for people who face extraordinary challenges in their lives. The social worker’s scope of practice may contain helping at risk or overwhelmed individuals find resources, develop new coping strategies, resolve problems and conflicts, and secure opportunities to improve their quality of life. (Flynn, 2013) Although the scope of practice is basically the same, there are various types of social workers with various levels of education. It doesn’t matter if you are a medical, clinical, school, military, psychiatric or community social worker, the goal is
Over the course of the semester, I have learned a variety of many things regarding social work. These things vary from learning how to help oneself to understanding how to help others. Not only were the textbooks very useful, but also the materials that furthered this textbook learning. The in class presentation, activities, and guest speakers gave us insight and a different perspective on the material we were learning. I feel like this course has given me a good foundation and prepared me as a future social worker (1).
On July 7th I had an interview opportunity with the Oasis Shelter in Owensboro, Kentucky. This was one of the numerous opportunities that I placed on my possible field interest to receive an internship at. I met with the director of the Oasis shelter in Henderson, Kentucky that afternoon for the interview. The interview went well, and I informed the director that I was a Sociology undergrad student looking to expand my knowledge with domestic violence. Towards the end of the interview, the director informed me “we do not accept many Master of Social Work students because MSW’s are know it all. The student thinks they know more than individuals in the social work field with five or more years of knowledge.” I received the directors contact
families, and communities to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social workers are change agents and because of that, they aim to help people develop their skills and abilities to use resources provided to them to strengthen and improve their lives and communities to resolve problems. One of the main goal of social workers is to improve the well-being and lives of the most vulnerable populations, fight against poverty, unemployment, domestic violence and the underserviced population by emphasizing on the person-in-environment and social justice model. The social work profession, considerers the individuals’ internal and external struggles, while working with the individuals to examine their relationships, family, work environment, community, and other things that might impact them and identify ways to help address problems and challenges.