Fist Pump Pending

Friday night was my last workshop for my practicum.

I'm almost ready to breathe a huge sigh of relief and give an enthusiastic fist pump, but I'm not quite done with the workshop yet. I have to polish up my portfolio and get it turned in. It's due on Wednesday, but I'm heading out of town on Tuesday morning, so I need to have it done and turned in by Monday. So far it's 78 pages long. I have about 8 more pages I'm waiting for final approval on. Then I'll add those, and Bob's your uncle! I will hit an education milestone that seemed so far out when I started school. I can't believe I've reached this point. It's an event that seemed so daunting in the beginning. Practicums are usually part of master's degree programs, so I felt a little "in over my head" when I found out I had to do one, but I've also looked forward to it. It's pretty cool to get to the point where you have a little more control over what you're learning and how you implement it.

I don't think I've talked much about my practicum here; just a few brief mentions of it. Basically, I had to write, market, and teach a family life education workshop on a topic of my choosing. All of this was done while working with a consultation group and under the supervision of my teacher, who is absolutely amazing and has prepared me more for my future than any instructor I've had thus far (and I've had some pretty good ones)!

Choosing my topic was hard because I had so many ideas and so many things I am passionate about. I was very prayerful in selecting my subject matter, and the topic I was inspired to write about was happiness - particularly for women and mothers. Happiness in motherhood is something I have personally struggled with, so it was great topic for me to invest in.

There was a lot of flexibility in the practicum. I needed to provide four hours of instruction, and that could be done in a variety of ways. I could have taught a one-hour lesson four times. I could have taught a two-hour lesson two times. I just needed to get four hours in. I decided to do it "the hard way" (I didn't know it was the hard way until I was too far into it to turn back) and have three 90-minute classes that were all different. I ended up reviewing a total of 112 research studies to write my curriculum (I didn't use all of them - the research starts to get repetitive the more you delve into it).

It was a lot of work, but it was worth it! I learned so much, and I had a blast teaching my workshops. I networked with some great family-oriented organizations, like Power of Moms and Aha Parenting. I also got to correspond a little with Linda Eyre and Sonja Lyubomirksy, which was really fun!

The workshops themselves went really well. I had a wonderful turnout - forty different people attended across three sessions. I designed the workshop so people could come to one session or all sessions. I had quite a few people who came to all three, which was so kind of them! I was overwhelmed by the support I received, and the feedback I was given was positive.

 

{A little snippet from the first session}

In its entirety, doing this workshop has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, so I'm really excited to be able to do the fist pump sometime within the next 24 hours. It will be one of the more meaningful fist pumps I've done.

via GIPHY