During the class Program Planning I participated in a project that was titled “Project PLAY.” This program was directed at the small community of Falls City, Oregon. The elementary school did not have a playground. Our job as team members was to find out a few things about this elementary school and the community and what it is that they needed by having a playground. This class helped me to learn to do several things, of those included data collection and how to write and develop a program. By finding that Falls City needed and wanted a playground, it helped our team to move forward to help them. It was through discussion with the parents and children that we found our which pathway to pursue, so that the community would find the most benefit from the playground.
During my Internship class I learned how to evaluate my interventions and programs and learn how to effectively communicate with the audience I was working with. I was in charge of creating an educational poser that showed women and children the benefits of consuming more water each day. While it might have been easy to just state lots of facts with numbers that support the facts I had to be considerate of the audience I was addressing. I had to turn my focus on how to communicate to the children that would be viewing my poster and how to make water “interesting.” What I cam up with was making water fun through slight modification. Some examples were adding food coloring so that the water could be whatever color you wished, or adding slices of lemons to give the water a tangy taste. After figuring out these alternative forms of water we created stations that allowed the children to sample the types of water. The type of water that was most effective was the dyed water, so in future use poster sessions will focus on the children being able to choose which ever color the desire.
The final piece of the Program Planning class was probably the most beneficial because I was able to use my research to show a community the benefits of exercise to their children not only on the physical level but the mental level as well. The benefit of a playground and recess can increase student test scores as well as heighten attention in the class room. This information was able to show the parents that while a playground may be expensive in some aspects and would take a bit of work, the benefits would be excellent to the children of the community which struggled to graduate its children. I think there was a desire for a playground without the research that we provided, but once we were able to show that the playground would be more then just a place for kids to play, the whole community was on bored.
