Experiential-Didactic Session

Learning Objectives and Outcomes Measured:

• Through the assignment connected to this Experiential-Didactic Session, students will demonstrate:
  • Skill in assessing the cultural needs of the populations served.
  • Ability to function as cultural brokers between clients and other service providers.
  • Skill in developing and implementing culturally sensitive interventions for behavioral health in healthcare settings, school settings, and other settings.
  • Skill in assessing cultural perceptions in themselves.
  • Knowledge of the national standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services in healthcare and counseling.
  • Ability to assess how culture affects perceptions, interventions, and outcomes.
  • Knowledge to address the cultural biases in themselves.
  • Understanding and bridging barriers to help-seeking among diverse populations.

Assignment:
Self-Assessment and Recommendations Paper – In this assignment, students will go to an ethnic community where another language is spoken. In that community, students will try to access services and to understand people or be understood. Students will go to a grocery store in that community and attempt to buy a food item in packaging written entirely in another language. Students will experience the challenges of trying to meet one’s needs in a context that is culturally and linguistically different from one’s own. After the experiential exercise, students will write a reflection where each student assesses his or her experience and his or her own cultural assumptions, preferences, and biases, and how these biases and assumptions could affect one’s practice with diverse populations. Each student’s reflection should include a list of recommendations and strategies to a) address one’s own cultural biases, and b) serve culturally diverse populations.

Rubric below:

Rubric:

Outcome	Not Demonstrated	Minimally Demonstrated	Demonstrated
Self-assessment demonstrates careful self-analysis	1-3	4-7	8-10
Cultural assumptions are explored fully	1-3	4-7	8-10
Preferences and biases are explored fully	1-3	4-7	8-10
Analysis of how other cultures may interpret the student’s own behaviors and attitudes is clear, logical, and insightful	1-3	4-7	8-10
Recommendations for interventions with populations from other cultures are clear and comprehensive	1-3	4-7	8-10
Recommendations for interventions with populations of other cultures follow logically from reflection	1-3	4-7	8-10
Student demonstrates understanding and knowledge necessary for addressing own biases	1-3	4-7	8-10
Student demonstrates knowledge of the national standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services in healthcare and counseling	1-3	4-7	8-10