HONR455 Practicum
My work as a Learning Community Coordinator helped me to build global citizenship skills as I interacted with various students who are different than I am within my learning community. I learned from their experiences and compared them to my own. I made an effort to engage with those who are different from myself and inquire about their life and culture. More specifically, I inquired and asked my students more about what their home life is like and their views on certain situations such as religion and relationships since the perspectives differ among cultures. For example, when talking with one of my students, she explained that she is a first-generation college student as her parents immigrated here from another country. She went on to explain that some of the cultural practices differ from those that her family practice. I felt that being immersed in a diverse community of people helped me to grow in my knowledge of others’ way of life since I am from a city in WI that is made up of mostly Caucasian individuals who are similar in many ways (Relationships and Communication Levels 1-2).
Since my students took Introduction to Cultural Geography during spring 2021, I helped them understand cultural competence better by questioning them and encouraging them to do the same in order to build their cultural awareness. This allowed me to use what I learned in the class last year when I took it to help them to build such skills as well (Knowledge and Understanding Level 2). This also was useful when I hosted question and answer review sessions with their professor, Dr. Miller, as not only were my students able to learn, but I was able to brush up on my skills and be of assistance to Dr. Miller in providing information to the students (Knowledge and Understanding Level 2).
I was also able to develop my global citizenship skills when finding diversity activities for the students in my learning community to engage. During my sophomore year of school, I came across activities that were quick, easy and interactive. I felt as though these activities looked not only at people's differences in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation or other characteristics, but in terms of personalities, learning styles and other factors that go into each individual being unique and different in their own way. The two activities I focused on helped the students as well as myself to think about multiple perspectives and ways of thinking as well as how big of an impact diversity of individuals can have on first impressions (Self-awareness Level 2). One student and I ended up having a conversation about the first impression that is made about someone who is a first-generation college student like herself. Often, others perceive this person as inferior to them and as though they may not have as great of intelligence when in fact these perceptions are likely not true. This was an interesting conversation for me to have with her as I am in fact not a first-generation college student (Self-awareness Levels 3-4). I hope to have similar conversations and host these activities with more of my peers in the future so that they can go through a similar thought process as me.
During my junior year of college, I completed these activities while also doing an activity I created called Diversity Trail Mix. I wanted to introduce diversity in a fun way to students so I decided that students would make trail mix that they would later be able to enjoy based on some characteristics that they identify with (Self-awareness Levels 1-3). For example, the students took M&M's if they are extroverts, chocolate chips if they are introverts and some of each if they are ambiverts. In addition, those who believe they are of lower socioeconomic status added marshmallows and those of higher socioeconomic status took Goldfish. The students created their trail mix and then we all sat down and I had them look around at how different each person's trail mix was. This was a great way to show all of our differences (Knowledge and Understanding Levels 1 and 2). After that, my students and I discussed the importance of being aware of cultural and personal differences as a nurse when caring for patients.
As a future nurse, I hope to use what I have learned through this experience to be more culturally aware and culturally sensitive when working with patients to avoid offending someone and their beliefs. For example, some religions do not believe in blood transfusions, different religions follow certain food practices, and some cultures prefer to use holistic medicine or traditional healers as opposed to Western medicine. Knowing some of these simple practices and beliefs of different religions and cultures can help to make a patient feel comfortable. Being culturally competent helps to increase patient safety, improve patient outcomes and decrease health care disparities among different cultures.