Published on 4/19/2011 4:36:00 PM
Leanne Pinski (right) talks about her internship and the 'All About Me' project to a fellow student.
In the beginning of April, students in this semester’s class of Child and Youth Work Practice 2, showcased their senior projects in the hall outside of the Dean’s Office. The class is a senior workshop for students in SOE’s Applied Developmental Psychology degree program.
The course is an internship in Applied Developmental Practice (ADP) which may or may not involve intervention practices. The internship focuses on work with and/or for children, youth and/or families. Students began working on their projects in February and had to integrate them into their current internships.
Many of the students are interning with special educational needs students at local K-12 schools and in the social work field.
“The students are all ADP traditional students who are all doing 600 intern hours over the course of two terms,” says the course’s instructor, Cynthia Popovich. “They also meet once a week in a seminar class to discuss issues relating to their intern experiences.”
Students were assigned to come up with a project that would benefit their intern site. In early January, they wrote project proposals that were approved by their site supervisors. They had to think about what the goals would be for their project, how their project related to or supported child and youth development, how their project would benefit their intern site, identify what population would be served as well as how many clients/children/youth would be served by their projects. They had to identify what resources they would need and establish a timeline for getting their project done.
“We had to choose a project idea that would affect the entire school or one child in particular,” said Meredith Zebrowski whose project was encouraging her students to pick and donate to a charitable cause.
Zebrowski works in special education with fourth through sixth graders and the students chose the Animal Rescue League as their charity.
“They are all into animals and are so excited that we will be taking a field trip to donate the goods in person and see the cats and dogs,” she said. Zebrowski had posters on display that the students made. They collected food, blankets, and toys and will be taking them to the rescue league in the next few weeks. Leanne Pinski works with elementary school students, ages 8-11. The focus at her internship site is transitions-techniques used to help each student transition throughout the day from one event to the next. She helped each of her students create an electronic profile called “All About Me.” The children each made their own using power point and it is used to help new teachers learn about each child.
“After the students did the fun part, I added information like behavioral challenges for each student and what triggers them,” said Pinski. “I also added helpful hints for teachers and a list of techniques that worked for each child.”
The electronic profile will follow them from year to year allowing teachers to get to know each of their students. Teachers can also continue to add notes for future teachers to keep the profiles current.
Overall the projects were successful and in the end SOE students have made an impact on our community’s youth and their education. Popovich as well as the SOE faculty and administrators are proud of their hard work and accomplishments.