Final Reflection: Social Justice

Our core value of social justice was definitely one of the most meaningful to me
personally. While volunteering and giving back to the community was not a new concept to me, I
learned that social justice is much more than that. Social justice, to me, is a combination of our
views on human rights, our beliefs on equality, and our appreciation for diversity. When I think
of social justice, I think of a society in which everybody is equal, and everybody has the same
opportunities to participate in meaningful occupations regardless of race, sex, gender, age, or
disability.
Our social justice class during fifth semester was one of my favorite classes from our
entire program. This class challenged my views on certain topics in ways that I would have never
thought before. It made me self-aware of my own biases and unintentional discrimination toward
specific populations. Most importantly, I believe this class has helped prepare me to treat clients
of different populations going through different social injustices. I feel that I am now more
conscious of social injustices in our current society and that I have grown as an individual. For
this class, my group created a presentation on the transgender population. To prepare for this
presentation, we read two books on the population and interviewed various transgender
individuals. It was definitely an eye-opening experience for me. It made me aware of how nave I
was to the discriminations that this population faces on a daily basis. It also helped me see how
important it is that as healthcare professionals we treat all of our clients with respect and do not
make assumptions.
Implementing social justice concepts into my level II fieldwork was a very rewarding
experience. I was placed in an early intervention setting; thus, most of my therapy sessions were
in the home. Many of the families I worked with were from lower socioeconomic backgrounds

and had limited resources to help their children. We would always take in our bag of toys and
intervention equipment to use during our session; however, once we left the children no longer
had access to those materials. I wanted to show families that there are various low-cost activities
that they could use to help their children work on their therapy goals. Thus, I decided to go to the
dollar store and buy materials to create low-cost activities to work on different skills (i.e.,
bilateral integration skills, different grasps, sensory processing). I was able to educate the
families on how to create these low-cost activities and how to use them therapeutically. It was
very rewarding to be able to provide these families with resources and show them that they could
create these activities independently.