Blog 14 - Interview 3 Preparation

1. Who do you plan to interview? What is this person's area of expertise?

• I plan to interview my mentor, Debbie Cheben. This person is and has been a pediatric physical therapist for 10+ years. 

2. Verify that you have called your interviewee to schedule an interview. What is the date and time of the interview?

• February 2, 2016 at 3:50pm

3. Phrase an open-ended question that will help you find research resources that would help to answer the EQ.

• What are the different types of limitations a child can be born with and how does that effect the physical potential they may possess?

4. Phrase an open-ended question that will help you think about other useful activities you might do to help you answer the EQ (IC2, possible experts to talk to, etc.).

• What can the parent do to become more involved in the physical therapy process of the child/patient?

5. Phrase two open-ended questions that help you to understand your interviewee's perspective on an aspect of your EQ.

• How do you know when the  child has reached their full physical potential?
• How does a child born with limitations compare to one that has had an injury?

Blog 13 - 10 Hour Mentorship Check-In

1. Where are you doing your mentorship?

• I am doing my mentorship at Casa Colina Hospital and Centers for Healthcare. I work in the Children's Services Center.

2.  Who is your contact? What makes this person your expert?

• My contact is Freda Godinez. This person is my expert because she has been a pediatric physical therapist for many years. She has a doctorate in physical therapy and has graduated from both UCLA and Cal State Long Beach!

3. How many hours have you done during the school year? 

• During the school year, I have done about 13 hours. 

4. Succinctly summarize what you did, how well you and your mentor worked together, and how you plan to complete your remaining hours. 

• I typically work in an Early Start class, Kid's Crew class, or a physical therapy session with my mentor. The classes comprise of different activities/lessons/playtime that incorporates physical, occupational, and speech therapy in the mix. The things I do range from working with the kids to cleaning toys/tables or making snacks, etc. My mentor and I work quite well together. There is not much I can do during a session with a patient because I cannot treat the patient myself, however, my mentor explains everything to me as much as she can and always answers any questions I may have! I plan to complete my remaining hours by coming in every Tuesday and Thursday every week to do Kid's Crew classes and physical therapy sessions!

Blog 12 - Holiday Project Update

1. It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school. What did you do over break with your senior project?

• During break, I continued to go to my mentorship and volunteer there as much as I could. I also looked and saved many different articles that I could use for future research checks! I know this will save me a lot of time during actual school weeks and I also had more time during break to actually thoroughly research specific articles. 

2. What was the most important thing you learned from what you did, and why? 

• I think the most important thing I learned from what I did was that the senior project is not just something you can accomplish in a short amount of time. It is a long process that requires constant updating and working. I have had many obstacles thrown my way because I was not able to start volunteering up until a couple of weeks ago and time is definitely something I wished I had more of; however, I am learning, so I know I will be able to get it done!

3. Your third interview will be a 10 question interview related to possible answers for your EQ. Who do you plan to talk to and why?

• I think for my third interview I plan to interview my mentor again because she is a PT and has had a lot of experience in the field. She also can relate to the questions I have because she told me she had the same questions when she was going to school. In this way, I hope to get even closer with her and I know she will share with me all the information she has. 

Blog 11 - Lesson 1 Reflection

1. What are you most proud of in your lesson, and why?

• The thing I am most proud of from my lesson is the overall outline/organization for my presentation. I am glad that I was able to not only establish a smooth outline, but also tie everything together. I planned my lesson so that what I was talking about would relate to what I would be talking about next. For example, I talked about exercises and those exercises were in the pamphlets I brought/talked about next and the pamphlet showed exercises that had equipment in which I talked/showed next.  

2. What assessment would you give yourself on your lesson? Explain why you earned that grade using evidence from the component contract.

• The assessment I would give myself on my lesson is a solid P+. I believe I earned this grade because there was no concern with volume/enunciation, body language/eye contact, and engagement of the audience/content clarity. I am more than certain I was loud enough and made eye contact around the whole classroom. I also do believe I got the audience to focus and my content was very descriptive and understandable. I have also earned this grade because my research was clear/concise, more than one publish research source was cited, my interview was mentioned, and I showed depth of this 3 month process. I did everything that was required of the P consideration and I believe I did quite well on this presentation as a whole. 

3. If you could go back, what would you change about your lesson? How can you use that knowledge to give a better Lesson 2? 

• If I could go back, I would definitely do my hook better. Probably having someone break the chicken bone and me explaining exactly what the bone is comprised of was the better thing to do. I think I can use this knowledge to give a better Lesson 2 because this shows me that I actually need to do more research on the anatomy of the body because that is a big part of physical therapy. So, I hope to research and learn more about the actual science behind physical therapy.

Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

1.  Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?) Are you shadowing? Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic? If so, what? Are there other people who are experts in the location?

• My mentorship time will be spent at Casa Colina Hospital and Centers for Health Care. I am specifically working in the Children's Services Center. Here I will be volunteering in the "Kid's Crew" classes. These classes promote development for specific age groups of 3-15. I will also be able to shadow my mentor some days in physical therapy sessions of certain patients. I am able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to my topic because there are so many things that play a part in pediatric physical therapy. There are other people who are experts in the location because Casa Colina is a rehabilitation hospital. 

2. How did you find your mentor? How did you convince this person to help you?

• My orientation director at Casa Colina referred me to my mentor. There was not much convincing I had to do to have this person help me. She is very nice is willing to help in whatever way she can towards my senior project.

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship? How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at your mentorship with this person?

• I am pretty comfortable with my mentor. She is really nice and I know I will grow even closer to her as my mentorship continues. I have not spent a lot of time at my mentorship YET, but once I do, I will learn a lot from her!

4.  What went well in this interview? Why do you think so? What do you still need to improve? How do you know? How will you go about it?

• The interview was relatively smooth. There was no awkwardness or anything. I think I need to improve on actually engaging and comprehending in the interview rather than focusing on trying to get the questions done and totally miss what the interviewee is saying. I will go about this by trying to ask more natural questions and really focusing on the interviewee while he/she is talking. 

Link to Interview #2 Sound Clip:

https://soundcloud.com/megan-thi/interview-2-mp3cutnet

Blog 9 - Advisory Prep 3

1. State whether or not you currently have a mentor, and what the status of your interview is with that person. (I have completed the interview, I have scheduled the interview, I have not scheduled the interview, etc.)

• Currently, I do not have a mentor. However, I will in the couple weeks to come. I attended the orientation at Casa Colina Rehabilitation Center, the place I will be doing my mentorship, on October 20. During the orientation, I learned that due to the fact that their center is so big, volunteers will not be placed in their according departments to start volunteering until next Friday, the 30th. Unfortunately, this is when the mentor interview is due. I have asked the HR manager there if maybe I could perhaps interview my prospective mentor, however, she said because I have not become a volunteer yet, I cannot actually go into the areas in which the PTs work and also, she cannot guarantee what department I will be in until she sorts all the volunteers out. So because of this, I have not scheduled the interview because I do not know the who my mentor will be YET. I will be talking to my house teacher, Mr. Holt, about the problem I am having and ask him what I should do about it tomorrow! (10/22)

2. At this point, your research is probably guiding your studies toward more specific areas within your topic. Name the area or two you find most promising and explain your reasons.

• I am really interested in narrowing my topic of physical therapy down to pediatric physical therapy. Currently, I work at a tutoring center in which I work with children from 3-16 years of age and this is right around the age range in which a pediatric physical therapist works with. I have learned that throughout my years of working there, I truly enjoy working with children/adolescents and know I would have a great experience working with pediatrics in PT. Because of this, I know this may a realistic area I would be interested in working in for my future career, which is why I would like to experience it now!

3. What kinds of sources do you think will help you in the next month to gain more research depth? Where will you go to get them?

• I think sources that are specifically published by the American Physical Therapy Association (Section on Pediatrics), will definitely help me gain more research depth. My only struggle with this is that the books published from APTA are quite expensive and hard to get my hands on. I hope to ask around (I heard Mrs. Ortega has a book) to find one of their publications to help me further my research. I also hope to find more sources that actually talk about how the child/adolescent body works because I want to learn a lot more about how patients are treated and why. 

4. Write down a possible EQ. Please don't worry about wording other than ensuring that it provides the option for multiple correct answers. At this point, the senior team is most interested in understanding your thought process. 

• What is the most important factor in ensuring a child (patient) reaches their abilities to the fullest while maintaining the teamwork of both the PT and parents?

Blog 8 - Independent Component 1 Proposal

1. Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

• For my 30 hours, I plan to do an extra 30 hours at my mentorship. I am going to be doing my mentorship at Casa Colina, a very big rehabilitation center. Because of its size, the extra hours will allow me to explore and volunteer in many areas of the center. These areas can include pediatrics, sports, women's health, orthopedics, neurology, geriatrics, and cardiovascular. I am not quite sure yet as to what exactly I will be doing there, however, I know I will get a hands-on learning experience. 

2. Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence. 

• To meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence, I will keep a log of each day I spend volunteering and what exactly I did during those hours. This will go in my mentorship log and will prove my volunteering there. 

3. Explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

• I think these extra hours of volunteering will definitely help me explore physical therapy in more depth. Because I get to volunteer in all these different areas, I will get to know what it's like to work in them and this will help me figure out what I want to specialize in if I do decide to pursue this career in the future. I hope to experience a little bit in each of these areas of my mentorship, so that I can get a better understanding of the field as a whole.

4. Update your Senior Project Hours Log. 

• Done.