Post - Video Macro Questions

From the time I began this class to now I have learned a lot about macro practice and how it works. After this class my definition of macro practice is advocating for individuals within a community. It is raising awareness and getting the community involved with change. To be involved with macro practice it is important to have leadership skills. Some leadership skills that I hold as a social work student include: being punctual, organized, reliable, consistency, willing to listen to other individuals ideas within the group and honesty. All of these characteristics are important to have when working with a large group of individuals to advocate, raise awareness and/ or change a community. I found that this semester really put these characteristics into perspective and what it is like to be a part of a macro intervention within the BSU community. Being a part of the week of community interventions was one way that I am an activist for social justice. It is important to me that all individuals within society and within a community are treated equally and with respect. During the week of interventions I showed my support by attending the events while also educating peers about Domestic Violence against both women and men. Although I am not interested in working with macro practice when I graduate I still intend to remain an activist for victims and survivors of Domestic Violence by educating individuals and possible clients of the prevalence and harm of the societal issue.

Domestic Violence Awareness Week at BSU

Evaluate Community Interventions:

            I will start off with I was unable to attend most of the Domestic Violence week due to being sick but from the facebook page and pictures I can tell that it was amazing and everything came together wonderfully. During the process and being involved with setting up the events during this course I realized that macro practice is not all fun and easy, it actually is difficult and frustrating.

Evaluation of the week is good to see what worked well and what did not work well, what needs to be changed for the future awareness weeks and what can be kept the same. With these events evaluation can be done by collecting reflections and thoughts from students, staff and others that attended to see what people’s thoughts are. It is even helpful to have questionnaires and evaluations at the end of each event for attendees to fill out. This is good because they are there, thinking about the event, they can fill it out and leave it at the door on their way out. If you try and contact people later through email to leave feedback they may forget or just ignore it because they are busy with many other things. I think the best evaluations come from the individuals who came to the events because no matter how much stress and frustration we went through as a class it really matters what the outcome was and what the viewers think; we want them to come back for more and we will do anything for them to come back and raise awareness.

                                  

To evaluate students like us, I think it would be productive to do a pre and post test. Most of us came into this course never having any experience with macro practice work. If we took a pre-test before getting our hands dirty both the students and the professor could see where we are at and what we may need to learn to be successful at macro community work. At the end of the interventions, when everything is all over, we could take a post test to see what we have learned and where we stand with knowledge of macro community work. The post test can also include our thoughts of what went good and what went bad during the week of interventions. The class could also discuss and evaluate the interventions together in class to hear each other’s ideas and thoughts. With discussion it can at times be sugar coated because some students may not want to say what they are really thinking or feeling due to maybe offending someone; this is why it is important to have a confidential survey or test to get more accurate evaluations.  With evaluation it will help future students and current students successfully conduct macro community work.
                                                                                          

Discuss your learning:

I was part of the promotion team and after everything has been done I feel that there are many things that I would keep the same and some things that I would change if I were to do this again. I learned a lot about myself over the course of this semester, especially with doing macro work. Working in groups and working off of ideas from a few classmates is manageable for me but I realized when there are three classes with twenty students in each I get anxious and out of my comfort zone. It is much easier for me to work individually or with a small group; I take more from the experience and the communication when it is a small tight nit group. Although I find that macro practice is just not for me, being in the community and seeing many individuals come together to support and raise awareness was amazing. Not only social work students or survivors of domestic violence came to the events but members of the community, including the president of BSU, which was amazing! I also realized that the community is not always a agreeable place and not everyone is going to support what you are advocating so one needs to be prepared for what the community may say or do if they do not agree.

It was interesting to compare my strengths test with my actual involvement with the community interventions. My strengths test described me well which is why I feel that I was not into the macro practice and really getting involved as I should have. According to my strengths test my top five themes are discipline; wanting routine and structure, realtor; wanting close relationships with others, futuristic; inspired by what the future holds, consistency; everyone is treated the same and everyone is involved and adaptability; tending to go with the flow of what everyone else is doing. Being a part of macro practice there is not much discipline or consistency considering with macro practice there is a lot of room for mistake and change and most times workers are flying by the pants of their seat.

I learned that macro practice is constant changing of plans to adapt to the needs of individuals and planning is difficult because everyone has different ideas and thoughts about what is being advocated. Domestic Violence against women is a major societal issue today; this is something I had knowledge about but to see victims and hear their stories made it more real than it has ever been for me. It is nice to have the community come together and raise awareness it helps the survivors know that they are not alone and that people within society do care. In five years from now I will remember that macro practice is constant planning and changing but in the end the week of domestic violence awareness at BSU came together wonderfully. My advice for future students that will be involved in the community intervention week at BSU would be, “Be involved and ask as many questions. Know what is going on at all times, even if that means you have to contact and communicate with other classes or classmates; not everything will be sent to you directly, networking is very important.”

Overall, this course has been a great learning experience for me. I have never experienced macro practice because I have always feared that I would be unsuccessful with it so it was nice to be forced to do something that I feared and most likely would have never done.