Throwing Kids at Rocks

This year for my internship I work for a small non-profit in Denver that endeavors to expose low-income minority youth to the traditionally exclusive world of outdoors experiential learning. 

Snow Daze Music Festival–Vail, CO

Last week, I heard about a free concert series featuring O.A.R. and Weezer that was taking place in Vail, CO (about 2 hours west of Denver) over the weekend.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see O.A.R. for free, so I spontaneously decided to head to Vail with a friend for a weekend full of music and skiing.

Social Work, and beyond…

The University of Denver’s School of Social Work has an excellent selection of classes to choose from in order for every student to tailor the classroom experience to their individual interests.  There are four different clinical practice tracks (child welfare, families, high-risk youth, and adulthood/late life challenges),

Intentional Interviewing Skills/Lab

As I reflect upon the classes I took my first quarter, I want to share some insights gained from my Skills/Lab class. One key component to this class involves integrating interviewing skills explored in the class by videotaping interviews with another person. 

Denver Nature and Science Museum (great for parents)

For parents and non-parent students alike, the Denver Nature and Science Museum is a great idea if you’re looking for hours of engaging and fully interactive fun. My favorite section is the Expedition Health area. In this section of the museum you can run actual experiments, test your physical  endurance, and see what you’ll look like when you’re 70 years old. I spent about 2 hours in this one area with my daughter and wife. I’ve visited several science museums in different cities and the one in Denver is by the most educational and entertaining (for kids of all ages).

GSSW Information Sessions

The University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work offers information sessions throughout the school year to anyone interested in the program and able to attend the sessions held in Craig Hall on the DU campus.  The info sessions cover the entire process of applying/attending DU’s Graduate School of Social Work.  The program prides itself on aiding perspective students by sharing the experiences of current student’s, such as myself, as well as the guidance of various, experienced faculty members.

Upcoming sessions are scheduled throughou the first half of 2011.  The three remaining sessions for this school year are January 15^th, March 4^th and May 6^th.  Please visit us on our website, http://www.du.edu/socialwork/, and RSVP for any date that you may be able to attend.  Hope to see you there.

-Phillip

field experience

It’s really interesting to see and experience how multiple systems impact the children and families that I am working with on my internship. Intellectualizing the ecological perspective as part of the academic or class component part of social work and integrating that knowledge into the field experience and vice versa has been extraordinarily education.

Graduate School Community

Being a graduate student can become an overwhelming role. There is plenty of reading, writing and class-time as well as internship hours that can fill up anyone’s day. However, for those that can squeeze in a little bit of free time, there are groups and events to participate in.

Diversifying

My specialization at GSSW is the clinical High-Risk Youth track so the bulk of my classes recently have been geared towards the adolescent population (youth violence, substance abuse, juvenile justice system, etc.).  Although high-risk youth is definitely my passion and main interest, I was interested in diversifying my social work education in hopes of making myself more marketable when I graduate.  The open electives at GSSW really made this process easy for me. 

Class Assignment Turned Volunteer Opportunity

For our multicultural course one of the assignments was to first learn about a vulnerable population (i.e. GLBTQ community, Latino/a(s), etc.) and then go to visit that population in the community and interact with them.  I chose to learn and then visit Native Americans, as I learned about their history (from the “White” point of view) but never truly interacted with a member of that community.