Practice Reflection Paper

Please choose at least one of these practice activities to engage in this week. As always, you can also choose to write a reflection about your experience of doing one of these activities.

OPTION 1: Interview a classmate or someone in your life about a goal they are pursuing. A medium-sized goal works best for this (e.g. something between “make a cup of tea in the next 5 minutes” and “solve global warming”). Use the Task-Centered Approach to help the person break their larger goal down into smaller steps. Then, select one or two of those steps, and identify even more specific tasks the person might need to do as they make progress on those steps, and by extension, the larger goal.

Try to make each task SMART (specific, measurable, agreed-upon, realistic, and timely/time-specific). Talk about a timeframe for completing those tasks. Try to also anticipate any barriers that might get in the way of completing tasks, and do some problem solving about addressing those barriers.

OPTION 2: Select a goal that you hold for yourself. Again, a medium-sized goal works best. You might focus on one of your self-care goals that you have had a harder time implementing, for example. Go through the task-centered approach with your own goal. Identify smaller steps that you need to take to accomplish your goal. Within those steps, identify even more specific tasks that are required. Write up a plan that lists your SMART tasks with a timeline. Think through what barriers you might encounter to accomplishing your tasks, and jot down some notes or ideas about how you might tackle those barriers if they arise. Notice what is hard, easy, stressful, helpful, frustrating, etc. about different parts of this task-setting process for YOU. Consider what that means for what this process might be like for clients.

A brief description of what you did to engage in the practice activity. In other words, briefly describe what happened as you did the activity.
• A brief description of what you noticed internally as you engaged in this practice activity: how did you feel? What did you think about? What was easy or hard? What worked or didn’t work? How did you manage those thoughts and feelings during the activity?
• What did you learn from this practice activity? In other words, discuss things like: What does your experience in this practice activity suggest about future work with clients? What insights did you gain about what is effective or ineffective? What might your strengths be? What might you find hard? What might you do differently next time? What skills do you want to practice more?

Each reflection should be typed on a Microsoft word document. Regardless of when you submit it, the first practice reflection you finish can be submitted via Canvas in the “Practice Activity Reflection #1” assignment portal, the second under “Reflection #2,” and so forth. All submitted reflections will be graded every two weeks and will be assessed as follows:
• 6-7 points: Reflection is in-depth, covers all three main bullet points in the above assignment description, and clearly describes future learning implications based on the practice experience.
• 3-5 points: Reflection is shorter than 2-3 solid paragraphs, or does not cover all of the required points. Significant grammatical or spelling errors.
• 0-2 points: Reflection is very brief, and misses more than one of the above required points. Multiple problems with grammar or spelling obscure the writer’s meaning.