Throughout the course of this project, there have been many things I have learned. Some of these things are technical skills I have learned, mainly with how to shoot and edit video and use a blog. These skills are something I know I could possibly use in my future career as an educator. While learning these technical skills was a great experience, I also learned much foster care, CASA volunteers, case workers, and how these three entities flow together in the foster care system.
My blog project was an interesting experience from the start. I have never had a blog before and after being told in the first weeks of school how there will be a large final project and that it will be on Blogger, I was intrigued. I have seen blogs before but was kind of excited to create my own. However, I wanted to make sure that it looked well and that it was well thought out. From the first posts, I started to get a feel for the blog, starting with inputing text and basic photos. Then, I was shown the gadgets and how they can be used to provide additional information and formatting options.
My next main task was the video of my interview with a CASA volunteer. I felt this interview went well, mostly due to the preparation and research I did for the questions. While my setup for the video was very quick, I think the look of the shoot was good, with the framing focusing on Barb, the CASA volunteer. I then edited the video using Windows Movie Maker and I learned very much from this experience. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not overly difficult to use this program to edit the video, with the transitions and title cards clearly marked for my use. However, making cuts in the video was a little cumbersome, which would lead me to possibly find a better video editing software in the future. Uploading the video onto the blog was a very difficult task for me. At first, the video would not upload to Blogger and I would have to try it multiple times. Then after some time I realized about how long the wait time is and after reloading it was a success.
I had a phone interview with a case worker named Aretha. She provided me with very useful information into what social workers doe in the foster care system and how they provide many wonderful services. I used a digital recorder to document the interview. However, the audio was of poor quality and I decided not to upload it to the Blogger site. I was able to use the audio to provide quotations and paraphrases which is on the Blogger site.
These opportunities to learn these technical was a great experience. The greatest experience from this whole project was what I learned about foster care and specifically what CASA volunteers and case workers do to help out these children. Before this project, I never even knew what a CASA volunteer and with social workers, I knew of the profession, but not specifically what they do in foster care. After my interviews, I became more aware of their roles. I have discovered how the CASA volunteers are the constant in the ever changing lives of these children. When the children have different judges, different foster parents, and different case workers, the CASA volunteers provide some normalcy in their lives. The social workers provide many services that I did not know about. They have to make some tough decisions that I know I would never want to do. As Aretha said, in the interview, the social worker has many hats, including serving as a court liaison, provider of food, clothes, and other goods, and also as an emotional support for these children.
Even with all of the help that social workers provide for these foster children as case workers, there is still a sense of negativity associated with them. I think this negativity is due to several factors. One is the authority and duty of social workers to remove children from the home when necessary. This is a scary thought for parents and children, however, it is important that if the child is in danger that they be removed. Another factor is the dependability of the case worker. These case workers are not necessarily with a child from the time they are assigned a case in the Bureau of Child Welfare until they become adults. Depending on the situation (whether the child is in foster care, with their birth parents, being adopted, etc.) the case workers will change, giving the families a sense of instability. However, this change of workers is needed, because of people specializations. The last factor for this negativity is the media. The media has shown all of the negative side of social work and foster care, but none of the good. And in reality, there is more good then negative. However, to get better ratings and subscriptions, the media will put out the stories that are interesting and will get the readers hooked. This unfortunately tends to be the negative news.
This was an amazing experience and I am glad I took this class for a “simple” GER class. It was much more work then I imagined, however it was all worth it. I think that from this class, I will take a sense of pride in what our foster care system has done and what it can do with some work to fix some of its problems. I hope that in my future career as a teacher, I will be more informed because of this project and can be more involved in the lives of my students and help them as much as I can.
