Reflection of Family Engagement Project
While creating this family engagement project for children and parents, there was a process of program development, assessment, and implementation during the making of this project. I had to plan well thought out strategies and ideas to create a successful project that families could benefit from. The development my group wanted to portray is generating an activity to send home with families that they can work on while demonstrating learning abilities and testing their knowledge but also wanted to force families to engage with one another and have the means to become more involved. While planning this activity I also had to create a budget for all the supplies that needed to be purchased. I had a certain amount of money that I could use so I researched the most cost efficient materials so that they could all be included. When assessing my project, there were many trial and errors and tweaking to produce the pizza party activity. When a family is going through stress and working on building resiliency, they need the resources and support to help reduce that stress. This project can help fix that by giving these families an activity that they do not have to go out and buy the supplies, cut worksheets, or create step by step instructions to provide for their child. My group was able to limit the stress by providing all the materials the families need and taking them away from any distress for 30 minutes everyday to engage happily with their child. When a family is going through difficult situations they often feel anger, grief or pain. I strived for my project to limit that by keeping the family physically and mentally busy while creating their own pizza. Pizza could have been one of their favorite foods and expanding from that I provided a pizza recipe for the families to further their engagement and distract themselves from what they might be dealing with. There were many strengths of the project but there also could have been improvements. Instead of keeping 5 strict shapes for the child to place on their pizza, I could have pre cut more shapes and done less of each so that the child has more options for “toppings” on their pizzas. Another improvement I could have done is providing crayons for the children to color their toppings. I limited them to the specific colors I provided without giving them an option, whereas if they colored the shapes it could have given them more creative opportunities. A professional skill I developed while working on this project was teamwork. Each person in the group was assigned a task and had to be held responsible to complete their part of the project. I learned how to accept everyone’s ideas and incorporate them into the project to make it fair. Also, maintaining continuous communication so that team members and myself knew what task they were to complete and when they were due. Another skill I learned was problem solving. Due to us having other classes and busy schedules it was often hard to coordinate meeting times that worked for everyone or submit high quality work that the course deserved. I will apply these skills everyday in the workplace because I will constantly be working with other employees and dealing with different personalities, work ethics, and levels of determination and motivation. Working on this project allowed me to practice that and adapt to different environments where I had to use my own discretion on how to handle a certain issue or situation. The contributions I brought to the team was providing a leader. I stayed on top of the due dates and what tasks each person had to work on. The value that it brought was having the voice and direction of our group. If something needed to be done I always spoke up and made sure the project stayed on a successful timeline. I am in the Research and Methods class that focuses on the findings of these activities through surveys that we sent home with the children. Due to being in both classes I gave insight to my group on what needed to be fixed and how the other class thought we could improve.