I have been working with my Internship at ARI for almost two months now. Hard to believe that it has already been that long. Today I had my first counseling type of session with a girl that we will J. She is 21 and I was just getting to know her a little bit today to make her feel comfortable with her being around me. I took a pad and paper with me to help record how the conversation went so that if I had to do a process recording, I would have at least something to go off of. :) The session last for about 20 minutes. I thought it had only been 10 minutes and then realized that it was already 20 minutes. I will start out at 20 minutes, but will eventually have a full 30 minutes to an hour with J. My supervisor wants me to work with J to explore what she thinks a relationship is and what a friendship is. It was a good short session...we didn't break any ground quite yet. Give it a couple sessions...and then maybe I will get somewhere.
In my group work...I am observing or using behavior analysis with the special needs adults that I work with. Today the job was to help place price tags onto some shawls that will be soon sold at a store like Burlington Coat Factory. Anyways...I was sitting down next to one L who tends to have jealousy issues when other people talk to me. She will tell them to shut up or be quiet. I worked with her today though and told her that was mean of her to say to her friends and she needed to pretend other people were not making noises or talking to me. She gets distracted real easily and so I modified her job. Her job was to take the shawls out of the package, place them into a pile so that I could put the price tag on them. What did I do?? I made the job a game. I asked her to just concentrate on five bags at a time rather than the whole stack. She would then count out her five, open them, place them on the pile. I would reward her by saying, "good job! Now do another five!" She was getting antsy with about twenty minutes before lunch. I told her, "ok...lets see if you can finish that whole stack before you leave for lunch, ok?" She agreed and wanted me to time her. With this she completed the stack that she had with in 15 minutes. I was proud of her and told her she did a great job! When I left for the day (at lunch time for her), I told her, "Now when you come back from lunch, I am not going to be here. So just pretend I am sitting right here and asking you to do five at a time." She liked that idea and I told her that I would check back in with her on Monday when I am in next.
When my group goes to lunch, I head upstairs to talk to my field supervisor and give him the run down on what has happened. He was impressed that I worked with L and made some type of progress. He said, "see! you are using the behavior analysis that I have been teaching you for the past two months!" I felt that finally all of this is clicking. I am just hoping that I will get my full 100 hours in by May. At this point...it will be awhile as I only work 2.5-3.25 hours each time I go in. I know that the readings that I am doing is counting towards my hours as well. I would have more hours in if this snow would not have came so often.
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