Social Work Reflective Essay

A seemingly simple process of conveying useful information with shared meaning to another person can be one of the greatest tools for change that social work can yield. A teacher has the power to ignite or dampen passion, strengthen or weaken skill development, and facilitate learning growth or stagnation. A skilled instructor can influence the subsequent generations of social workers and thereby impact the types and magnitude of change aided by the social work profession. It is core to social work that each of us strive to push the continued development of the profession forward for the betterment of the populations we serve. This is why I believe teaching is a central point of action where social work can have the greatest implications for change.

In my own experience as a student, a pivotal moment occurred early on in my education when I struggled to understand the content, developed self-defeating thoughts and a loss of motivation, when my instructor implemented different strategies to help me gain mastery of the skills taught in class. After a few different engagement exercises I finally experienced one that made sense and everything began to come together resulting in improved

Specifically, how learning is achieved varies across individuals. Research and theory have provided good insight into different learning styles and how these influence student learning and mastery. Ultimately however, learning is the outcome directly related to the level of skill development within the instructor. I plan to use techniques to facilitate student learning such as working through examples that apply the content to practice, providing process worksheets to guide learning through assignments, utilize a variety of presentation formats to engage multiple different learning styles and help maintain student attention, and connect class content to the readings and provide quiz incentives to complete the readings before