Lauren LaBorde OT425 + OT 537

After leading group today by myself, I feel as though being a group leader can be both stressful yet exciting. I feel as though it can be stressful sometimes because if group isn't going as planned exactly, the leader must be adaptive and go with the flow. At one point in my group today, a member started to hit some of the processing points when we had yet to finish our activity. As a group leader, I had to adapt and let it flow accordingly without skipping any of the activity. Also, one of the group members was going to be late and that kind of stressed me out not knowing when in the group session they might show up. While trying to lead the group, I kept thinking in the back of my mind how I was going to fill in the group member when they showed up without singling them out for their tardiness. Overall, I think the most important thing I learned is that even though you have a protocol written with a timeline, anything can happen during group. As a leader you must be prepared to b

Before I turned in my final draft of my group protocol, I met with Ellen and Valerie to get their feedback. I thought this was a very helpful experience because it allowed me to see where my peers were going with their group facilitation and get their thoughts before I facilitated. My first thoughts were that I thought my classmates took a very creative approach for the activities on their given topic.  My take away was that it was an enriching experience to gain insight into classmates creativity and also it was helpful to hear feedback or have someone peer review your protocol before you get up and lead a group for 30 minutes. I think this should always be done in real life just to get others perspectives and allow them to contribute to possibly making your group session flow better.