Students will use observation skills of various aspects of community. Assignment assist students in understanding the culture, norms, function of community, and context that impacts human behavior in social environment at the community level. The goal of assignment is to demonstrate students’ ability to apply reflection from observation of community macro system and apply conceptual frameworks to how social workers professionally engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate communities from strengths perspective. See appendix B for assignment details and grading rubric.
Students will use observation skills of various aspects of community. Assignment assist students in understanding the culture, norms, function of community, and context that impacts human behavior in social environment. Student will pick 1 from the following list and observe for at least one full hour. Students are to do the observation by themselves, without distraction. The goals is to understand the power of being in a community macro system and how observation contributes knowing how one would professionally engage, assess, interventions needed or being used, and evaluate from strengths perspective.
1. Saturday Night at the Police Station
2. Mornings on a Main Street
3. Third Thursday on Joplin Main Street
4. Lobby of a Medical Office
5. Court House Entrance
6. Park Bench at a Park
7. Sitting at a Trolley Stop/Bus Stop
8. MSSU Student Union
I would like you to write about number 6 Park Bench in the Park.
Please no big words or phrases and try to keep it simple worded.
9. Lobby of a Social Service Agency
10. Fellowship Hall of a Religious Organization
11. Stands of a Sporting Event (observing community interactions)
12. Auditorium for Play, Music Concert, Orchestra, etc. (observing community interactions)
13. Parking Lot of a Grocery Store in affluent community
14. Parking Lot a Grocery Store in a low-income community.
15. Emergency Room Waiting Room
16. MSSU or Community Library
Engagement/Introduction (all question prompts need to be addressed) (30 points)
• Describe the arena and the activity you engage in and describe briefly what you will be discussing in this paper
• Reflect and describe the feelings anticipated feeling prior to attending the event and then describe the actual feelings you experienced.
Assessment (all question prompts need to be addressed) (30 points)
• What did you learn about population access or interacting this part of community
• Assess resources available or necessary. Be specific
• Assess how inclusivity of the community area; be specific of various means of inclusivity.
• Assess concepts of ecosystem such as subgroups, entropy, relational interactions (competition, predation, commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism).
Intervention/Critical analysis (all question prompts need to be addressed) (30 points)
• Identify community efforts for interventions and implications AND how did having them meet a community need? Example were there trash or recycle bins, flyers in differing languages, observable resources, etc.,
• Where there items or resources that are culturally responsive to community constituents,
• What interventions would you recommend based on assessment of experience?
• Who would need to be involved and why?
Evaluation/Summary (all question prompts need to be addressed) (30 points)
• Describe any formal evaluation or methods for evaluation for community members to participate in? For example, surveys available on a table, or comment boxes.
• Evaluate your learning from this exercise.
• Discuss what kinds of learning you would like to do to further your understanding of community context.
Professional Writing (10 points)
• Punctuation, Citations, References, Spelling, use of APA
