Learning Objective 1: Function as mindful humanistic change agents and empathetic leaders skilled and knowledgeable about how to catalyze and sustain changes in social systems.
Artifact: Excerpt from Action Design for Change Final Assignment
“Through my work at the Boys & Girls Club and in partnership with the local school district, I have begun to notice a large disconnect between students and their parents when it comes to understanding disciplinary incidents or improving academic success. Engaging parents in a conversation about their child’s homework completion rates or behavior can be challenging with disconnected phone numbers, lack of transportation to the school, difficult work schedules, or language barriers. In my experience, having more involved parents keeps students more accountable for their behavior as well as creates an environment where school success is set early. Understanding why some parents are able to keep this connection strong and others are not is something that the Boys & Girls Club and the school districts hope to better understand in order to strengthen our collective parent services…
My plan is to create paper and electronic based surveys as well as in person focus groups in conjunction with the school to understand what the barriers are for increased parent involvement. The goal of the surveys is to measure what parents think their existing engagement levels are, what their motivation for engagement is, how they think their involvement affects their students, and some general ideas about what ideal engagement, events, or parent education classes would be. The focus groups would be conducted after surveys have started to be returned and to finish out the research period. Parents who completed the surveys would be invited to participate for further dialogue. Here, I would dive deeper into motivation and gathering ideas for “ideal engagement levels”, building ideas for increased programs and events, and understanding how parents see the effects of their involvement. The results from the surveys and focus groups will then become the outputs that I will base conclusions on in order to develop a plan for change.
The impacts that I plan to see through this project would be improved academic performance and a decrease in disciplinary events both at school and during Boys & Girls Club time. These basic impacts should have long reaching effects as students would be more likely to succeed in school, proceed to secondary education easier, and secure jobs of their choice based upon the history of success with similar studies outlined above. The community that I work in is rather small, so depending on how far reaching the strategies become, there could be a long standing impact for the community. I will be piloting my initial research at one school based after school program that I run, but the goal is to create a replicable toolkit or methodology that can be shared with Boys & Girls Clubs across the country as well as other similar organization in order to diagnose their barriers for parental engagement.”
Rationale: This excerpt showcases the final outline for change that I hope to create through my project. I believe that it weaves together my first hand experience of working with families that may have challenges as well as the knowledge that I have gained through this program in creating a project design that will facilitate change. In addition, through the Action Design for Change course and this paper, I was able to recognize how to make my project a replicable model that can be shared with similar programs anywhere in order to diagnose problems and work towards finding a solution.
Changes in Professional Life
One of the struggles that I face daily is relaying to parents pertinent information about their child, whether it be a behavior issue that occurred during our program, a message from a teacher, or even a note of success. Being a young professional without children myself, it has been difficult for me to create and foster relationships with parents in a way where I feel comfortable detailing some of these things. This project has forced me out of my comfort zone and made me learn how to interact in new ways with parents. Through mindfulness practices, I have been able to help quench some of the anxiety I face in these situations, and I’ve also learned a lot about being more empathetic to those “difficult” parents. Being able to communicate in new and better ways has helped me mature tremendously in my career over the last year.
Changes in Personal Relationships
Most notably has been my ability to use mindfulness as a way to strengthen personal relationships. My anxiety has kept me from continuing to develop certain relationships in order to try and keep myself “healthy”. By utilizing mindfulness, I have been able to restore relationships that have fallen by the wayside as well as allowed me to develop new relationships.
Changes in me as a Person
As I sit and write this reflection, I am constantly being distracted by my phone and Facebook as last night we received the news that three of our good friends had been in a car accident. One was pronounced dead at the scene, one air lifted for head trauma, and one lucky enough to be home today with only bad bruises. All three were volunteer firefighters and were going around to local business to promote their upcoming fundraiser. It’s hard for me to process right now, and I’ve always thought that I was good at handling death. As I continue to reflect on why this particular life lost is so hard on me, I credit it to this program. Through courses like our Mindfulness course, we learned how to change our thinking in order to be able to understand and handle situations like this, but it also allowed me to have a deeper emotional connection at the same time. I shared on Facebook last night that “you see things like this all the time, but until it hits close to home, you don’t understand the gravity of the situation.” You can empathize with a life lost across the country, but until it’s someone you know who has a huge impact on the community and a wife and new born baby at home, I don’t think you can really understand what it means to empathize. This program has taught me and allowed me to do that.
ePortfolio: Anna Montgomery 