Group Work Practice

For those of you who are in the process of making a choice about your second year method concentration, I invite you to contact me with specific questions about group work.  As you may know, the three approaches to social work at Wurzweiler are group work, community organization, and case work.  Group Workers use group-based methods designed to help people understand themselves and others better.  Facilitators plan and conduct groups for children, teens, adults, senior citizens, etc, in a variety of institutions and settings. 

In many ways, our class is run as a group, and a large focus is placed on providing students with practical experience facilitating groups. This is a year long second year course.  Students write 2 papers each semester; there are no exams.

Jewish Social Philosophy

This is a required course for all second year students. This course explores major philosophical themes such as spirituality, the nature of the human being, time, good and evil, loss and suffering, loneliness, the sin and repentance/behavior change, and social justice. The focus of the course is on acquiring specific knowledge and on examining your values. It is organized around the following questions: What is the essence of being human? What is the role of time in human functioning? How do human beings deal with the problem of evil, and how do you and your clients explain tragedy, pain, and suffering? What is the process of behavior change for people who are unhappy with their lives? How can social justice effect social change? This one semester course has two papers and no exams.  After completing this course, you can expect to develop your own conceptualization of human nature and a philosophy of helping that you can apply you your work with clients.

Values and Ethics

This course formalizes the study of  values and ethics into models of value analysis and ethical decision-making. The models are applied to concrete issues and cases, thus combining theory with practice in ethics. You will examine how personal and professional values affect your practice and will learn models for ethical decision-making You will learn how to identify an ethical dilemma and how to  resolve it. This is a required course for all second year students.  There is one paper and one presentation.