Select one self-help group meeting to attend and also one community group meeting. Your role is that of an observer, NOT A PARTICIPANT, so you should not attend a group you are already involved in, and you should not attend the group for the purpose of getting help yourself or joining the group. You are there merely to observe the group dynamics and leadership/facilitation skills.
You may attend in person or virtually for each of these groups, but you are responsible for locating the group yourself and asking the facilitator for permission to attend. When attending the group, you should be as unobtrusive with your attendance as possible and should respect the group’s confidentiality.
After attending each of the group sessions, you should construct a 5- to 7-page reflection paper on the experience. This paper should briefly give an overview of each of the groups and should use course-related terminology to describe the setting, purpose, facilitation style, goals, group dynamics, engagement, patterns of communication between members and leader and between members, etc. The facilitation/leadership styles of each of the group leaders should be discussed and compared/contrasted. How did the group leader empower the members of the group? How were the strengths of each member capitalized on? You should conclude your paper with lessons learned from your observations. What would you replicate from each of the group sessions if you were to lead a group, and what would you do differently?
All sources should be cited within the paper, and complete reference entries should be provided on the reference page. The paper must be in APA format. On the reference page, you must cite the group you attended (name of group, date and time of group, location of the group, including city and state (or virtual).
