As a Human Service professional, I understand that I am committed for life to continue seeking the experience, training and education needed in order to serve my clients effectively. Just as the STANDARD 36 of the Code of Ethics states that “Human service professionals hold a commitment to lifelong learning and continually advance their knowledge and skills to serve clients more effectively.” That means that only getting a bachelor’s degree in Human Services would never be satisfactory to serve effectively the population that I work with. That is because new policies are being passed that affect or impact my population; new intervention programs or approaches are been discovered that actually work better than the techniques I practice, or there are discontinuing techniques because they are not beneficial to my clients anymore. Perhaps, there will be new issues regarding my population that I need to know in order to address them and be able to assess my clients on how they are being affected by those issues. In order to be updated and competent, I must be committed to attend workshops and trainings, and even attend new academic courses or certificate programs that will definitely lead me to achieve the goal of being competent to work effectively with my population. Therefore, I’m looking into graduate programs, and one that it’s interesting to me is Social Work offered by Hunter College. They offer specializations on Child Welfare: Child, Youth, and Families, and also on immigrants and homelessness. I also would like to continue my career path on Special Education to work with children with special needs and/or immigrants. I’m currently trying to find more information about NYC Teaching Fellows.
