Unit Introduction and What You Will Learn

Week 16 is the final week of the semester and is asynchronous. Students read Chapter 2 of Kirst-Ashman and Hull (2018), which addresses stress and time management. These topics are both relevant to macro practice and to the sustainability of social work careers. There are forums to reflect on the semester and learning, consider stress and time management practices, and engage with the textbook content. There is no lecture video this week.

The learning objectives for the week include:

• Identify evidence-based strategies for managing stress and evaluate their relevance to personal and professional contexts.
• Use time-management techniques to improve practice effectiveness
• Analyze personal time management behaviors to identify areas of strength and opportunities for growth.
• Synthesize key insights from the course into a meaningful reflection on learning and professional development.

Unit Assignments

Content

• Read Kirst-Ashman and Hull (2018) Chapter 2 Stress and Time Management

W-16 A-01: Asynchronous Participation and Engagement

I appreciate your patience, as it has taken me longer than I hoped to get these out to you. The expectation is that each reply will be substantive and contribute meaningfully to the forum’s conversation and scholarship. There are six forums this week, and students are expected to make at least three replies across any of the forums. These forums include the following:

• The Key Insights and Lessons from This Course forum closes the semester by inviting students to share any significant learning — about course content, themselves, or their professional development — that happened over the course of the class.
• Students engage with prompts drawn from the teaching guides on stress physiology, workplace stressors, and time management skills in the Chapter 2 Textbook Questions forum.
• In the Time Management Case Study, students work through a scenario involving a CPS social worker overwhelmed by competing demands and apply specific time management strategies and procrastination-reduction techniques in response.
• The How You Managing Stress forum asks students to reflect on the stress management strategies from the reading and share what has worked or hasn’t in their own lives — and what they might want to try.
• Students do at least a day of personal time tracking and share their results or reflections on the experience in Time Tracking and Reflecting on Your Time.
• Areas of Strength or Growth for Time Management Behaviors asks students to assess which practical and reflective strategies from the chapter represent personal strengths and which areas might warrant development.

Unit Resources

You can listen to a podcast episode for this week’s reading Chapter 2 Stress and Time Management, or see the entire series Podcast Series.

To-Do Lists

• Read Chapter 2
• Make at least three replies across any of the forums
• Have a wonderful summer!!!