Moving Toward the Real World

We are heading into the last courses for the Therapeutic Recreation Program that I have been taking at College!

I feel physically and emotionally tired a lot of the time, and there are days where I become very discouraged. In spite of that I feel even more strongly that  I REALLY do have a lot to offer to people who are facing life challenges with disability and aging.
I do have a sense of purpose once again.



My bookshelf of this years resource books and binders!

The past month has involved 3 different
courses with so much writing that blogging fell to the very bottom of my to do list!.

We have looked at Diversity Issues and at the changing face of our aging population.

• I did a paper about traditions and the core values that direct peoples choices and lives.
• We did presentations about religious and other symbols to bring awareness about spiritual aspects of peoples lives.
• Next week our class will take turns presenting group projects about five different cultural groups that are part of the immigration groups choosing Manitoba Canada as their new home and hopefully prepare fun programs that would be of interest to people of that heritage.

We have taken a class on Documentation.

• We learned how one works with record keeping in the hospitals and personal care homes.
• We learned about taking histories that include peoples interests backgrounds and
• we are learning about how to help people have a chance in engage in activities that are meaningful to them as well as therapeutic.

Now we are looking at Programing for Leisure by spending several days at a personal care home.

• We are job shadowing Therapeutic Activity Workers and learning about everyday life in personal care homes. 
• We are helping with parties, current event groups, music entertainment and many other events.
• We are each being assigned a resident to visit and work with a few times.
• We will do a one to one program were we will plan out and care out  program specially designed to meet that person's needs and interests.
• Next we will organize and lead an event for a group of about 10 residents.

Things are getting exciting and more fun as we move towards using all the information we have been learning. Next month we will be doing a job placement.
We will be out into the real world!