Week 1
Getting to finally practice in a live environment.
It felt really good to be able to get some boots on the ground experience, and I've been able to implement the skills that I've been developing for so many years and see them work. It feels like I've spent ages building a dot to dot of different skills, and I'm finally starting to connect the dots and see how the big picture comes together.
Seeing just how smart and emotionally aware these kids are.
In my experience this isn't the standard, but they're really compassionate, patient and caring with eachother. I've seen older kids take care of younger kids and support them while playing handball, some of the kids are really on top of making sure that the kids with higher support needs get taken care of and aren't bullied by others, in one instance I had a kid in year 1 teach me how to use the school's laptops with a greater sense of patience and communication (albeit limited by the short life experience of a child) than many adults who have taught me have.
Having the opportunity to see how I function in the environment on a bad day.
I had one day where everything that could have gone wrong in the morning did, and I ended up showing up late, unshowered and without breakfast, and I still managed to do really good as a social worker. In a different school or environment, especially one that has higher demands, it would not have been as good a day, but in Martin's Gully I had a great time.
View from Logan's desk at placement.
Week 2
Learning experiences.
I've had so many learning experiences. I've been able to play the game of sorting through all of my tricks and experiences to find out which one works with each child that I'm working with, I've been able to use narrative and systems theory to gain deeper understandings of the lives of these children, and I've been able to build some great rapport.
Helping one child in particular overcome one of her issues.
Working around what I can't say due to confidentiality, I noticed a child struggling with being able to make friends because she didn't have the hand-eye coordination or social skills to participate in handball. After some skill development and conversations with her teacher, I taught her how to get better at handball and managed to introduce her to some other children that she seems to have made solid friendships with.
Learning how to move forward when things don't work.
Again, working around what I can't say due to confidentiality, I had the opportunity to learn and practice some coping strategies for when I've done everything I can and nothing works. I'm glad I could get this over with early on in my placement, and there's going to be opportunities to try again in future, but I'm glad I had this opportunity because it helped me build some professional resilience.
