Sociology 306 : Reflection
Doing the Parent Toolbox kit this semester was a fun experience. I had the opportunity to connect with different sociology peers, and understand the meaning behind collaboration and compromise. I learned that developing resources for parents and children comes with some difficulties. To me it felt difficult to give parents tips, when I am not a parent yet, and have not experienced life as a parent yet. I also learned it takes a lot of research in order to produce material parents want and need to refrain from opinions and focus mainly on facts.
In Stress and Crisis, I’ve learned that families are put into certain stress and crisis situations and sometimes it is hard to get out of those situations. The parenting toolbox is a kit used to help parents with resources that helps uplift them as a parent, while also giving parents pointers and tips based on research on how to handle certain situations with their child. It is understood that parenting can be hard, so having a toolbox kit by your side to aid you in the time you need it should be the main goal! Resilience means having the ability to withstand or jump back from a situation that happens in life. Giving parents the tips to not only take care of their kids developmentally, but by also normalizing taking care of themselves mentally and physically is important as well!
Overall I believe that our group project went well! It is a kit to help parents gain knowledge on how to be there for their child and for themselves. A strength that made this project great is that it was based strictly off of research and data. Another strength our class had was that a lot of our classmates were already familiar with researching and analyzing data. As well as the knowledge and experience from creating multiple resources and programs for other Sociology classes. Something that I believe we could have done differently could have been communication together as a whole. I noticed that a lot of the decisions made were made by the same few people, one of them being myself. However, that is something I am trying to learn. I do not need control over situations and it is ok to have other opinions contribute. I believe something else we could have improved on was respect for each other. Sometimes during the designated class time to work on our project, I noticed how some students’ opinions and suggestions were being ignored and dismissed a lot. Although a group may not agree with someone’s opinions or their contributions it is still important to respect that!
I believe from doing this project I have developed a lot of things professionally. A few of the things include collaboration and program making skills. I developed these skills throughout my time here at Longwood, and from this project, I was able to see these skills come into play. Collaborating within the department is nothing new, however, learning that we had to complete a semester-long project with a group of over 10 students, I thought it would be a challenge for me. However, being in classes with the other students, it taught me to have patience for others like they have for me. It takes a lot of dedication and time to effectively work in a group on an important project. After completing this project, I had the ability to strengthen my knowledge of needs assessment and program evaluation to learn how to properly create a program that can benefit a multitude of parents and children. These skills could be beneficial to my career choice because of the organization, and relatedness this project has to my desired future career.
My contribution to the project first started when each of our groups were assigned to read about your topics and do a miniature annotated bibliography for the class to help get a better understanding of tips parents can do to help promote healthy habits for their children. Afterwards, we collectively picked which themes,tips, activities, challenges, and mental health specific topics to touch on more deeply for our toolbox! From then we went through the process of creating a powerpoint to develop our booklet. From that point on, I helped pitch ideas to my team, and created the space for open ideas throughout my team. Lastly, I was one of the presenters for my group, which I thoroughly enjoyed, because it helped me strengthen my public speaking skills!
Thank you!