Rebuilding New Orleans: A Community Field Learning Experience

Abstract

This article examines how to set up educational seminars for social work students that expose students, first-hand, to a natural or man-made disaster's physical and human impact on a community. These short, intensive experiential seminars help students appreciate the social work role in addressing extreme cases of trauma and loss that have immediate application to their professional work and studies at home. The study also presents evidence via personal reflections of students and faculty about the value-added benefits of the seminar learning experience in terms of the students' integration of course material, readings, and field placement experiences, and their personal and professional growth and maturation as beginning social workers.

Keywords:

• field education
• experiential education
• macro-practice

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Adena Kirstein and Robert Lebowitz, two MSW graduates who participated in one of the field seminars, for their contribution to the Theoretical Framework section of this study.