Practicum Reflection

Megan Shrum

Concordia University, Nebraska

800 N. Columbia

Dr. Nolan Harms

Abstract

As a graduate teacher assistant, I practiced the skills required to be an effective health educator, as I developed lessons and plans for my health education courses in order to educate my students about important health issues in the world today. Assessment was utilized when gathering information about each student's health and then designing a plan to address these health concerns and/or behaviors. Apart from teaching health education courses, I was responsible for leading and conducting a health centered student organization on campus, while also meeting with prospective students.

Introduction

Concordia University, Nebraska was founded in 1894 by the LCMS and is a private educational institution of higher learning located in Seward, Nebraska (Concordia University, 2014). Concordia is a Christ-centered academic community whose mission is to prepare students for lives of learning, service and leadership in both the church and world. Their vision is, “By 2015 Concordia University, Nebraska will grow and expand its influence to diverse populations by fostering collaboration and adapting to our changing environment while remaining faithful to our mission of excellent Christian education” (Concordia University, pg.1, 2014). Concordia is a non-profit organization that is funded by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod as well as donors.

My role at Concordia was to be a graduate teacher assistant which consisted of teaching health education courses such as, lifetime wellness, drug education, and first aid/cpr. Each was an entry level course consisting of around 20-27 students. I also was responsible for leading and conducting the Phi Epsilon Kappa honorary on campus. Some minor responsibilities I took on included, meeting with prospective students, and doing student interviews.

Although Concordia is not specifically a public health related organization, their mission and vision can definitely contribute to the public health mission of protecting, promoting and advancing the health and safety of our nation. While working in the health and human performance department, I had the opportunity to educate students about how to live in a way that promotes optimal health and wellness. The public health issue to be addressed centered around educating college aged students on how to obtain and/or maintain a healthy lifestyle both in the present and future. College students are known to practice unsafe and unhealthy behaviors. The CDC reports that college aged students need to be taught healthy practices related to diet, stress, physical activity, and communication. They also state that college aged students are at greater risk for rape, binge drinking, STDs, and suicide (CDC, 2013). Higher educational systems play a large role in addressing each of these issues and trying to prevent any negative outcomes. Without the help of educational institutions, public health would have a very hard time communicating pertinent information to school-aged children, adolescents, and young adults. The Health and Human Performance department gives college-aged students the knowledge and tools to live out a healthy lifestyle while also preparing them to promote a healthy lifestyle to others both in school and in the world. Educating students on how to succeed both personally and professionally is a top priority. Being a private school, Concordia has the opportunity to make Christ the basis for all learning. Implementing spiritual well-being into the classroom, is a rare privilege that many do not have.

Educational institutions play a large role in public health as they are the core to promoting healthy behaviors and lifestyles. Educational systems teach students how to live out a healthy lifestyle while also providing them with the tools to do so. Upon graduating from Concordia, it is our hope that each student leaves with all of the necessary tools and resources needed to live out a healthy lifestyle, while keeping Christ at the front and center.

Discussion

My role at Concordia was to be a graduate teacher assistant. The graduate teacher assistant position required me to teach 12 credits each school year while maintaining at least a 3.0 GPA average in the Master of Public Health program. My teaching responsibilities were in the Health and Human Performance department and consisted of teaching health education courses such as, lifetime wellness, drug education, and first aid/cpr. Each was an entry level course consisting of around 20-27 students. All three classes played a significant role in helping to achieve the mission of public health. In drug education, students were given the knowledge and tools to address current drug trends in society while also practicing ways to avoid drug related incidences in the future. Students prepared a mock campaign that would help to address select drug trends in adolescent aged children.

In Lifetime Wellness, we addressed each of the health related issues shared by the CDC above, that affects college aged students. In this course, plenty of hands on activities were provided in order to get each student familiar with healthy practices. One day a week, students participated in one hour of physical activity in order to encourage students to maintain some level of physical fitness. These hands on opportunities allowed students to get first-hand practice at improving their lifestyle. The CDC reported that in general, college aged students are not getting enough physical activity and are eating poor diets. Obesity is of major concern, especially in this age group, therefore, this class provided ways to encourage physical activity and proper diet. Two of the major components of Lifetime Wellness included evaluating and creating their very own nutrition and fitness program. Both of the projects address each of the issues by giving the students hands on experience and resources to have better success. Students were to create a program that they can foresee themselves using in the future.

First Aid/CPR not only certified students to be trained in FA/CPR but also taught them how to respond quickly and appropriately in dangerous situations.

Apart from my teaching, I was also responsible for leading and conducting the Phi Epsilon Kappa honorary on campus. This consisted of selecting and approving students into the organization who met all of the requirements as well as organizing and conducting an initiation ceremony for each new member. Some minor responsibilities I took on included, meeting with prospective students, and doing student interviews for students seeking to enter the Health and Human Performance program.

My objectives were to: 1. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the multifaceted areas of health and human performance, 2. proficient in written and verbal communication skills, including the appropriate use of technology, and 3. apply critical reading and thinking skills required to be an effective teacher within the field of health education. Each objective was obtained as I prepared and conducted health education courses. Evaluations were completed in order to determine whether or not my teachings were effective in getting across the public health message. Also, students assessed my ability to educate them in a effective, timely, and professional manner. Although, evaluations can be intimidating and hard to read as you will receive some negative feedback, they are crucial to the success of your program and growth. Without assessment it would be very difficult to make positive changes. The results from the student evaluations indicated that they were in fact learning the important health information being taught. However, assessing their

The main public health domains that were addressed in this practicum were policy development, as I developed lessons and plans for my health education courses in order to educate my students about important health issues in the world today. Assessment was utilized when gathering information about each student's health and then designing a plan to address these health concerns and/or behaviors.

In the Health and Human Performance department it is important to ensure that your students are not only learning but partaking in healthy behaviors. These behaviors can be learned and practiced in the classroom but should later be implemented by students as they partake in their day to day activities. For example, in Lifetime Wellness, students were taught about healthy behaviors such as proper nutrition and maintaining daily physical activity. Although I knew that the students were partaking in an hour of physical activity while attending class, it was challenging to determine whether or not they were honestly partaking in healthy diet behaviors and physical activity outside of class. Further, each student completed a nutrition project recording their daily food intake and later analyzing the results. Knowing whether or not they were recording their diets accurately and honestly was very difficult. The most I could do was to encourage them to be honest in their projects but there was no way of ensuring it. The same issue applied for when students were required to record their physical activity. I knew they were getting in that one hour during class, but I did not know if what they recorded with their Apps and fitness logs were accurate. One of the greatest challenges in teaching behavior change, is to motivate the listener to take what they've learned and apply it in their lives consistently. For example, I would have specific students state that they were uninterested in changing their current, unhealthy diet, as they just didn't care about the consequences in this stage of their life. College-aged students generally do not see the consequences of making unwise health decisions until much later in life. Without seeing or experiencing the negative consequences of these actions, it can be hard to recognize why change must happen or to be motivated to make changes. My goal and challenge was to motivate students to make healthy changes right now, despite not seeing the negative health consequences of behaving unhealthily. Having open, student-centered discussions allowed students to not only think critically but to hear from peers who are in a similar situation. These discussions, I believe, were the most effective in encouraging students to make healthy lifestyle changes. However, I would still have students who just didn't care or want to make any changes. These are the students whom I wish I had more time to work individually with.

In this practicum experience I was concerned that my age would be a problem. Being so close in age to my students presented different challenges. I had to make sure to have very professional relationships with my students. Being a young, graduate assistant, I figured that it would be challenging to gain the respect of my students. I found that providing a very professional, organized and well planned out class, is vital to maintaining a respectful environment. Also, treating each student fairly and respectfully helps to ensure that they too will treat you respectfully. Age did not seem to be a problem throughout the entire experience, which surprised me. I actually found that students seemed to be more attentive to what I was teaching as they could highly relate to my recent experiences.

Lastly, another very challenging experience in this practicum was incorporating the interests of each student, specifically in Lifetime Wellness. Every Wednesday we would do some type of physical activity and with 27 students in my class, it was challenging or near impossible to plan activities that every student enjoyed. Some students wanted to do very structured exercises, while others wanted to play more sports related activities. There were many opinions in what activities we would be participating in. In order to address this challenge, I took inventory on the very first day of class of what activities were most highly preferred. I had students list the top five activities they wanted to do in this class and then later made sure to do those activities in class. I also made sure that there was a lot of variety in the activities so that I could reach the interests of each student throughout the course. I found that the reasoning behind not wanting to do certain activities was because students did not feel they were talented or good at that type of activity. In these situations it was really important for me to ensure that I provided a safe and inviting environment that allowed students to feel comfortable participating. Generally, once the student participated in the activity they learned that it wasn't so bad and that they actually enjoyed it. My goal was to make them enjoy physical activity in order to encourage them to be more active outside of school. Considering obesity rates are so high, it is crucial that my health classes not only get in their physical activity but enjoy doing so in order to encourage them to partake in these behaviors outside of class.

Personal Assessment

Public health practice deals with a vast array of populations who have many different experiences, set of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. When working with these populations, especially in public health, it's very important to recognize these differences and adjust your work accordingly. Being culturally competent and recognizing the social norms is crucial in working with a diverse population. Through my teaching experiences I have realized how important this truly is. Without respecting the social and cultural norms of my class, I will be unsuccessful in effectively communicating important information as well as encouraging behavior change. In order to gain and maintain the respect of my students, I have to recognize these norms and adjust my teachings and behaviors accordingly. This ensures more effective teaching and encourages students to participate in class discussions. In both public health and higher level learning, it is crucial that you do not neglect to recognize the social as well as cultural-norms of the target population. If you do ignore these norms, you are setting yourself up for failure, or ineffective implementation. For example, in my lifetime wellness class we discussed different health disparities found among certain races. When addressing these issues in my classroom, it was important for me to be sensitive to the different racial groups in my classroom. I had students from a Latino or African-American background, each who explained that celebrating with food particularly for large family gatherings were very common. Both of these ethnicity's suffer from greater health disparities largely related to socioeconomic status and access to healthcare as well as lifestyle behaviors related to diet and physical activity. Instead of targeting these two populations, we looked at each race and took note of specific challenges each face while also discussing what cultural behaviors may contribute to these disparities. We then would have open discussions describing ways to overcome these challenges. I felt that by recognizing each groups challenges we were not singling anybody out or making a certain group feel looked down upon. Hopefully this encouraged a safer, more inviting classroom environment.

The public health competencies that were applied during this practicum include communication and informatics, diversity and culture, leadership, professionalism, program planning, systems thinking, and public health biology. Communication and informatics were practiced when sharing lectures in class related to health, and performing student interviews. Diversity and culture was utilized when dealing with a diverse classroom, practicing cultural sensitivity, and when speaking about the different health related behaviors and disparities and their correlation with different ethnicity's and races. Also, leadership and professionalism were utilized when leading and conducting health education classes as well as leading and organizing the PEK organization. In my lifetime wellness class I taught about the leading causes of death in America for all populations and later, as a class, we examined what was the cause for each of these disparities, ultimately practicing public health biology. Public health biology was also practiced in my drug education course as we examined the different side effects that drugs had on the body. Program planning, and systems thinking were also utilized when planning and prepping for each health education course.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Upon completing my two years of graduate teacher assistant responsibilities I have developed a desire to continue teaching. My hope is to someday further my education by achieving a doctorate in education. By furthering my education and experiences in public health, I hope to someday continue teaching at a higher level educational system. Prior to teaching at a university, I hope to further my knowledge and experiences in public health. In order to be an effective educator at the higher level, I personally feel it is necessary for me to gain further experience in the field of public health. Being able to share these first-hand experiences with my students will enhance the learning experiences and hopefully make me a more effective health educator.

I have also learned through this experience that college students at Concordia are lacking knowledge in health overall, particularly in behaviors related to diet and nutrition. Whenever I would get to my nutrition unit, I was amazed by how little the majority of my class knew. Extra time was needing to be spent on nutrition and diet. I feel this is due to poor health education at the high school level. Many high school's are providing the bare minimum amount of health education for their students and therefore students are lacking knowledge in this area. If schools do not provide adequate education in health, then students are going to be more prone to making unhealthy decisions, greatly impacting public health. Not only are students lacking health education but they are also lacking access to healthy options. In particular, they are lacking healthy school food options at the collegiate level. We have seen revisions made at the lower level education systems but not necessarily at the higher level. College-aged students have a limited budget and generally are limited to eating the foods that are in the cafeteria. During college you develop eating habits that will stick with you after school ends. Not only does there need to be further education in the area of health but also college students should be provided with better and easier access to healthy food options. By providing these things at the higher education systems we can improve the health of the nation as the college students age and later share these healthy practices with future generations.