Week 14

Monday and Wednesday of this week were spent arranging final products, producing a binder for the mentor/mentee program, and meeting with supervisors.  I got to have a wonderful lunch with Irene.  We talked about the structure of the practicum and my personal struggles being a student operating in a professional environment.  I updated her on my learning plan, and we spoke of social work as a powerful arena for social change on all levels.  The meeting was insightful and fully enjoyable.  I also got to catch up with my previous field instructor from the last practicum over lunch.  It's been such a tough week outside of the agency trying to piece together final projects for classes and make some last-ditch efforts to avoid getting a cold.  Boo for winter weather.

Week 13

I only worked Wednesday of this week because of a trip to Florida.  However, I accomplished a great deal.  I met with Tim this morning to go over the last Follow-up that I missed.  The mentors were paired with mentees.  They interviewed each other in sets of twos and threes.  Some groups got along better than others.  The entire group came together for an activity I proposed that we call the "balloon activity."  This was mostly a relay race.  Participants had to run and pop a series of balloons using body parts other than their arms and feet.  Wish I could have seen it.  

I did some planning for the next time the mentors and mentees see one another.  I will be leading the group through an activity from a book called Learning Leadership by Michael Brandwein.  The activity is called Popcorn and the Infernal Kernel.  I also got a better idea about what the next follow-up will look like by talking with Tim.  

I'm still waiting to finalize the schedule for the toy drive.  We still don't know when Jameson Camp will be able to pick up the toys from downtown Indy.  But the bulk of the work for the toy drive will be copying all the data from toy drive applications onto an excel sheet to submit to a higher power.

I accomplished a great deal of work for the learning plan today.  There are only a few more products to produce before the semester is completely finalized.  I'm excited to be coming up on another 2-night follow-up in December.  Tim even offered me the opportunity to continue attending follow-ups as a paid employee.  Exciting times!

Week 11

Last week was productive.  I had a long meeting with Tim to discuss all elements of the Learning Plan.  Tim and I came up with some better ideas about what products seem most appropriate for different objectives.  He gave me a lot of great ideas to end the semester with.  

There was also a great low ropes session with the good people of Endangered Species Chocolate.  The group had 18 employees present for the challenge course.  We started with Trolleys.  Two staff members then took half the group to 2 elements of the challenge course, then we all met up in the end to see if the entire team could climb a 10 foot wall using only 2 helpers at a time.  They had some interesting approaches to apply to the wall, but the group seemed to learn fast and stay calm.  The most beneficial part of the activities this time was the adequate amount of time spent debriefing with the groups.  We had about 2 hours to spend with this group, and they got to do about 4 elements per group.