Global Posts

Hello all! Welcome to my blog. My name is Courtney Price and I am so excited to start the journey of my junior internship. Prior to this internship, I have had a variety of experience that I believe has prepared me for this internship. I have been able to volunteer at a variety of different settings, work with different populations, and get to see multiple different leadership styles that have taught me valuable skills. Additionally, I’ve had the opportunity to plan and implement my own facilitations to peers, middle-aged adults, older adults and children within the Farmville community. During this internship, I hope to enhance my communication skill with my colleagues and further develop my leadership skills in order to gain confidence in my ability to provide therapeutic recreation services. My current interest in the field of therapeutic recreation is to work on an Alzheimer’s and Dementia unit at a long term care facility with elder adults. With that being said, I also have an interest in working in a behavioral health setting with children and adolescents.

Hello all and welcome. I am excited to see what this summer has in store for all of us for our internships. I have been looking forward to this summer internship thanks to my many experiences at The Virginia Home and my day of volunteering at Club Rec with Sheltering Arms. Those experiences have allowed me to have many opportunities to work with individuals with disabilities as well as improve on some of my techniques and skills that I have learned since changing to the Therapeutic Recreation Major. I hope to improve on my implementation skills during this internship, whether it is virtual or in person, and to better improve my research and presentation skills that go along with the course project for the internship. At this point in the major, I would have to say I am interested in working in the rehabilitation field of Therapeutic Recreation especially with athletes or possibly working with children. Overall, I am looking forward to what this summer internship holds and all the opportunities that it will bring.

Welcome Mentor, Instructor, and Peers!

I am so excited to learn all I can throughout this online internship! I feel I am quite prepared for the next few weeks due to having such amazing teachers who have allowed me to grow in the classroom by making us continually practice skills that are needed in future settings. Skills such as continually practicing facilitation techniques, writing program plans, and conducting research has allowed me to be very prepared for this internship. Also the opportunity to shadow different recreational therapists in different settings such as mental health to long term care through fieldwork hours has most certainly helped as well. I hope to gain more confidence in my self when facilitating and also hope to develop a strong relationship with my mentor by working along side them through different assignments. My current interests in therapeutic recreation is working with adolescents in a mental health setting and working with recently freed prisoners on reintegration into the community.

Thanks for coming to my page! 🙂

Melrica Williams

Hello and Welcome to my professors, mentor and peers! I am excited to share this unique experience with you all.

My years in the Therapeutic Recreation program at Longwood have shaped me tremendously into the individual I am today. One of the more formative experiences for me was completing the senior poster presentation. We had the option of working with a partner or going at it alone, I chose to work alone (not typical of me). Upon completion of this demanding assignment, I had found the confidence to go my own way and make decisions for myself (and conduct research like no body’s business). Furthermore, this is not a specific, one time experience, but realizing my worth and capabilities over time has greatly enhanced my mental preparation for this internship.

By the end of this internship I hope to be able to develop a new program for ServiceSource that the Recreational Therapy department can implement into their services. I also would like to become more knowledgeable about community integration processes and procedures.

I am interested in adventure therapy and helping people overcome mental health challenges.

I look forward to learning and growing with you all over the next several weeks.

-Sarah Irby

I am excited to be involved in this novel experience of a remote internship. While I know this will not be the experience we had all anticipated for this summer, I look forward to growing through an internship that is not what we traditionally would have. I believe this only helps us to be prepared for the unexpected.

Some of the most important experiences I feel have prepared me for this internship are the many in-class facilitations of programs and the hands-on work during fieldwork hours. Coursework frequently involves developing a plan, implementing with peers, and receiving constructive feedback. I have found doing this process several times to prove helpful over and over again. Facilitating in a more controlled setting has allowed my confidence to grow in an environment where I feel most comfortable and supported. Also, fieldwork hours have allowed me to see programs in action with real clients who are working towards individualized goals. Seeing and aiding in the implementation of programs in those various settings, from parks and recreation to long term care, has shown me the range of benefits the field provides. Fieldwork experiences also pushed my comfort zone as I engaged with clients, helped in implementation, and brainstormed programs with supervisors.

My fieldwork hours and my classroom time has made me particularly interested in physical rehabilitation and adaptive sports. I am also interested in inclusion programs.

During my internship, I am hoping to improve on my ability to create goals, be creative, and be confident in my programs. I am eager to learn about more ways to advocate for clients in their communities and empower clients as well.

Welcome Instructor, Mentor, and Peers!

Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog! I am excited to be apart of this experience with everyone for the next few weeks. I feel as though the past four years have really prepared me for this, between classroom facilitation’s, preliminary fieldwork hours, Healthy Innovations, and many other great opportunities I got to experience in the program. I hope to better my communication skills between my mentor and other students while working on different assignments throughout the next few weeks. I also hope to become more confident in my leadership abilities during facilitation’s, group discussions, and my work overall. My current interests in Therapeutic Recreation is working with adolescents in a hospital setting. I also have an interest in working with older adults on an Alzheimer’s and Dementia unit at a long term care facility.

Hello

Welcome peers, mentor, and instructor to my Summer Internship blog! My name is Rebecca Locey. I am currently a senior in the Therapeutic Recreation major at Longwood University with a minor in psychology. The most important experience I had to prepare me for this internship was when I volunteered at Centra Pace and I got to see first hand how often you may come across a resident who isn’t interested or is hesitant to join in and interact with others in different programs and activities. It was awesome to see how well the CTRS, and myself, after observing could easily spark up a conversation about the activity or something they enjoyed and be able to convince them to give the activity a try, because the involvement in the activity let a spark show through in the individual, which made my day. This skill also prepared me to be able to handle a situation that may arise like the one mentioned above at my internship and I would be knowledgeable enough to know how to go about it. The second most important experience I had that prepared me for this internship is when I was volunteering at McGuire Hospital in Richmond with Curtis. I was observing him and his intern he had at the time, which made the experience much more of a learning experience because I got to fully see what an intern would do there and how they go about doing them. This was also important because I got to observe but also help the intern write a progress note for a client after a session which really gave me a grasp of documentation and how it is written. One skill I hope to gain from this internship is a better routine or schedule for documentation and helpful tips on the best times to get it done so as a RT I won’t be behind in that category. The second skill I hope to gain from this internship is some tips on how to better implement an activity or some pointers on what I can do differently to make the implementation successful so the clients get the true meaning out of it. One area of interest I have in the field of TR is long term care with older adults and a second area of interest would be older adults in a community setting like where they come for just the day and return home in the evening. The reason I have a strong desire to work with older adults is because my great granny was in an assisted living facility for awhile before she passed and I know first hand she did not have a recreational therapist there to engage them in activities so with this job I would be able to advocate and present research as to why having this kind of program in these facilities is beneficial to older adults and their health as well.

Hello mentor, professor, and my fellow peers and welcome to my blog! My name is Carrie Bailey and I am super excited to begin my junior internship. Since my first day in the Therapeutic Recreation program at Longwood, I have always enjoyed the hands-on experience that Longwood offers. Prior to this internship, I have had a variety of experiences that I believe have helped prepare me for this internship. Thanks to the 120 plus preliminary fieldwork hours that I have had to obtain, I have gathered countless experiences from a wide variety of agencies and populations. Two of the most important experiences that I have had this far that I believe have prepared me for this internship are being able to write an detailed implementation plan for a specific population as well as building rapport with my clients. Due to volunteering with different populations, I have observed and practiced first hand many different leadership techniques that I believe have helped me grow tremendously as a future Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist. In addition, I have had the opportunity to plan and implement my own facilitations to peers, children, middle aged-adults, older adults, and countless other populations. During this internship, I hope to enhance my communication skills with my peers, professor, and my mentor while further developing my leadership skills in order to gain confidence in my ability to provide therapeutic recreation services. My current interest in the field of therapeutic recreation is to work with older adults in a long-term care facility. However, due to my interest in psychology and my psychology minor, I am also interested in potentially working with adults in a mental health setting. Thank you for taking the time to come to my blog! Have a blessed day!