Reflection Paper On Cultural Diversity

The individual that I chose to interview, we will refer to her as Ms. M, is a long-standing member of the counseling community and a personal and professional mentor of mine. Currently she works for the state in the social services field, though she still uses her dependency counselor skills, it is not to the same extent that she once did. However, because of her qualifications she is still able to conduct assessments, offer counseling, and help clients recognize and navigate potential addiction pitfalls. For this interview we spoke about her initial entry into the field and her time as a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) in the women’s prison system.

Currently, I am a counselor in training at East Carolina University within the Department of Addictions and Rehabilitation Studies. Upon graduation, I will be pursuing licensure as a Clinical Addiction Specialist and a Professional Counselor. I am working at the Navigate Counseling Clinic, under the supervision of Qunesha Hinton, who also serves as my ECU doctoral student supervisor. My faculty supervisor is Shari Sias, Associate Professor, Substance Abuse and Clinical Counseling Program Director at East Carolina University (office number: 252-744-6304; email: siass@ecu.edu) and facility supervisor is Dr. Leigh Atherton at Navigate Counseling Clinic (office number: 252-744-6300; email: athertonw@ecu.edu) .

America is greatly influenced and enhanced by the many versatile cultures which inhabit it. Cultural diversity has added to our economy in such a way that it brings innovated ideas and contact structures throughout the world. International cuisines have come to America through subcultures, have expanded the food industry, and have allowed English Americans to try new foods and flavors. Immigrants have brought with them religious values that greatly differ and vary from those at which were natural in the main stream American culture. The educational development through foreign nationals has led America, as a nation, to excel and be deemed one of the most intelligent nations in the world! Consequently, the subcultures have kept our

While undertaking an internship at a domestic violence clinic, I conducted an intake with a young woman who eventually returned to her abusive partner. Several months later, I was informed she had died at the hands of her abuser. While the vast majority of our experiences will involve successfully helping people overcome obstacles, there will be instances where despite our best efforts, human tragedy unfolds and people succumb to life’s challenges. In my opinion, this is one of the more difficult aspects of social work, but many people who enter the profession, including myself, trust the rewards will balance the tragedy.

In June 2014, I registered with the North Carolina Substance Abuse Professional Practice Board for certification as a Certified Substance Abuse Counselor, and began private supervision. I passed the state examination the following year. Through discussions with my colleagues and professional supervisor, as well as interactions with university professors, I developed a desire to provide advanced counseling through social work practice. I believe social work provides the best means to provide healing for the whole person in their environment.

I had the privilege of talk to Diana W. Bear of the Inter-Tribal Substance Abuse/Prevention & Treatment Center. She is a Counselor at the facilities at Miami, Oklahoma. She confided in me why she pursued a career in substance and alcohol prevention as a second career in her life. She also had family member that difficultly with addictions and wanted to know more about addiction. With her desire to learn and overwhelming desire to want to help others to overcome it. She started by enrolling in some online class and finished up with attending Pittsburg State University for part of her college career. She started out as doing her practicum at the same facilities as she later got a job; she has been a counselor with Inter-Tribal Substance Abuse/Prevention & Treatment Center for now ten years.

The U.S is a special place to live because it’s a culturally diverse society filled with different cultures from around the world. I’m glad that I live in the United States because I got the chance to meet Gabriel someone that has a diverse background from me. I did the bicultural diversity assignment based on Gabriel culture. I’m pleased that I got the chance to learn his culture because while doing this task he taught me how to speak in his language, and he also told me exciting facts about his traditionals. There were several exciting things that he taught me about his culture, and I will be explaining it throughout my essay.

Working with organizations such as Salvation Army and CARE Clinic has provided me the honor of making a difference in my community. Meeting the needs of individuals is my way of investing in their future. Maria's House and Hope Harbor provided personal interactions with individuals recovering from substance abuse. Accordingly, their insights developed a greater understanding of how addictions begin and why they are difficult to overcome. Observing men and women working daily to maintain sobriety expanded my perception of those in recovery.

The United States is a multi-ethnic nation. In fact, according to the national census survey results, there are more than twelve races including whites, black Americans, American Indians, Chicanos (Mexican Americans) among many others in the US. With such a rich ethnic diversity, it calls for an equally rich ethnically diverse nursing workforce. An ethnically diverse workforce will, among other things, prove decisive in providing the best medical attention possible, increase efficiency in obtaining and disseminating crucial information and provide patients with options on the ways to attend to them (Huston, 2010). Furthermore, it will be important in enabling the nurses on call to undertake their duties with greater zeal due to the many options

Coming into this internship with previous experience working with a diverse and at times difficult population, I did not believe that working with individuals in this milieu was going to be problematic. However, as the weight of the responsibility of “do no harm” began to become a reality, I begun to have doubts in my competence in being able to reach the clients while remaining professional. Then suddenly, Chris gave me the opportunity to run a 12-step meeting at the DAC. Since I was unaware of this previously, save for my wits and experience I felt I was unprepared. Regardless, I consciously became engaged in the challenge and pulled from my own history of AA and used a popular exert on page 416 about acceptance to tie in relevant circumstances. I could sense the patients becoming open to me, and when it was over, I felt energized with the awareness that I can do this.

Staff members can use seminars about cultural diversity as a resource to obtain information about the differences of people from diverse cultures. This will be more advantageous since this consist of the information obtained from this resource and has compressed information for different communities (Tanner, 2006, p. 204). This makes it easy to distinguish btween the differences and the similarities.

I do believe that Ada represent a multi-cultural diverse community in a small scale. It is a community where the dominant community is Caucasian, then is followed by Native American community, Afro-American community, Hispanic, and Asian community. Moreover, this cross-cultural diverse community is appreciable on East central campus. In addition, Ada’s community is represented mostly from college students.

Devoting my senior undergraduate year to helping the homeless and interacting with offenders at Community Crisis Incorporation Service truly reinforced my desire to help the underprivileged. During this internship, I was able to step outside of my comfort zone and connect with individuals that I have not engaged with before. I enjoyed the feeling that I received by helping them enhance their wellbeing and providing them with useful resources that accommodated their needs. After my internship was complete, I have continued to volunteer each winter in the Warm Night Hyperthermia Program assisting families stay warm during the colder months. Morgan State Graduate School of Social Work Education has assisted me to fulfill my sense of duty in helping impoverished adolescent girls, boys and families to succeed. Hope, encouragement and someone who believes in you are often the little push one needs to live up to their full potential.

Diversity is defined as “the condition of having or being composed of differencing elements” (Webster Dictionary). Through my clinical experiences I have seen a lot of diversity whether it be different ethnicity, the family culture/make-up or students living with disabilities in the classrooms. Specifically, in my urban clinicals I saw more ethnicity and culture diversity differences between student to student and student to teacher relationships. However, in my suburban school clinical experiences I also saw diversity, but in a different way. Here I saw much more diversity in family make-up.

Since I started this class, I have a learned a great deal about cultural diversity in the classroom and abroad. My perspective has changed slightly but my knowledge of this subject has improved. In my family, my father taught me about the civil rights movement and the evils of segregation in the U.S. My parents taught me to be tolerant of all humans, no matter what they look like, how they dress, or their sexual orientation. My family has always been liberal thinkers who taught me the dark history of racism and bigotry in this country. As an educator I would be accepting to all race, creeds, and religious peoples.