Week 6

As everyone else has already said, the guest presenter was extremely impressive. What an interesting topic, and what a fabulous campaign! I really like the fact that we are actually assigned to real projects that will make a difference in the community rather than creating mock situations and campaigns. What a great way to get involved in the health topics of our communities! I am looking forward to the PTA Meeting at Montgomery Middle School this Friday night (even though Friday night seems like an odd time to have such a meeting - I wonder how many parents actually attend...) in order to learn more about the school, kids, and their families. From what I can sense so far, they are very involved and vested in their well-being and are being pro-active in their health and safety.
Let's see, other stuff from class... Listening to others' spill-your-guts about health stories was interesting. I especially liked the one about the hair dresser who spent 5 hours talking and working on that person's hair (forgot who it was - sorry!). The point that Dr. Engelberg made about how people frequently don't really want advice but rather just want to talk and tell their stories was so true. We were trained to use active listening with our therapy clients more often than offering advice because 1) people can usually generate their own solutions if they talk through their thoughts aloud with someone else, and 2) they are more likely to implement changes if they came up with the idea and its benefits themselves than if someone else told them what to do. Sometimes (often) holding back from offering my own opinion is really challenging, but it's usually rewarding in the long run.
Finally, I re-set my settings to allow site feeds, but I am not really sure what else to do with it. I'm still a little new to all of this networking stuff...