After four weeks of attending my Applied Practice and Theory (APT) sessions, I have to say that I have been very impressed with the level of input, commitment and involvement that everyone provides in each class that continues to build with each weekly class. My way of instituting a program has always been to plan, prepare and execute. To this point of our class sessions, we have been focused on the planning and preparation phases for our eventual execution phase to go into the Woodville community to help provide Conflict Resolutions strategies to the 1,500 to 2,000 individuals who have immigrated to the United States from Guatemala. When I first learned of this opportunity to participate in this APT program through Professor hedd, I was immediately excited with anticipation of doing something different other than what my current full-time job requires me to do each day serving as an Ombudsman. Although my background is in Organizational Conflict Resolution, I have never worked with an actual community to help resolve family related or other neighborhood related disputes. Nonetheless, based on the discussions with our invited guests like Ms. Paty Miken, I'm found myself being more confident and reassured that my current acquired skills will provide the people of Woodville and my fellow peers in the group very beneficial.
During Ms. Miken's presentation to the class, I enjoyed her personal insights on working with underprivileged people overseas. I found her to be very forthright and humble throughout her discussion. She was very candid about remaining flexible. She said that in her travels with other students, they developed a plan and after physically getting engaged, seeing the focus and plan shift to something completely different from their initial effort. Her ability to stay calm, smile and make personal eye contact with everyone in the room made her discussion so memorable for me.
