Journal

Each student will keep an on-line journal in Angel, which will be read by the instructor and other students. (Confidential messages to the instructor should be sent by email and not posted on Angel.)

The journal assignment consists of a report to be written as soon as possible after each work shift—or within ten hours, if it is not possible to write immediately after the shift—and posted on Angel. It must be done twice each week between September 7 and December 15, including the weeks of the Midterm and Final Assessments and the week of October 27 (when class will be cancelled during the NOHS Meeting). Please do your best to use correct grammar and spelling in your journal entries. Do not use text messaging abbreviations. 

Because these entries will be shared with the other students in the class, you must safeguard client confidentiality. For each person at your work site, clients as well as co-workers, make up a fictitious name. Keep a list of people’s real and fictitious names for your reference only.

For each entry write the following (Give details!):

1.

Something good that happened at work today and what your part in it was—for example, did you make it happen, did you benefit from someone else’s positive action, or was it completely spontaneous? If applicable, state how this good occur­rence affected one of more of the clients, your co-workers and/or your supervisor. What was it about the situation that caused you to feel that it was good?
 

Something that did not go so well—What can you learn from this experience? Did it result from something that you or another person might have handled in a different way?
 

Two or more of the following, giving specific details:
 

Praise or criticism that you received from your supervisor or co-workers, how you felt about this, and how you responded to it;
 

New skills that you learned this week—how you learned them and how you think you might use them in the future;
 

What this work is helping you to learn about yourself;
 

Whether this week’s experiences lead you to believe that you are presently working in the type of setting in which you would like to work after graduation—why or why not?
 

Questions that you may have about policies and procedures and whom you might ask about them;
 

Ethical concerns that have come up on the course of your work (that is, situations in which you are not sure about the right thing to do, or some­thing that is happening that you believe is not right);
 

Whether this placement is enabling you to use the skills that you have learned in your previous courses;
 

Whether you feel that this placement is enabling you to grow as a person and as a human services professional;
 

Anything else that you think is important to write in your journal.