-: I have the honor today of introducing Chuck Zastrow.
Chuck Zastrow is a emeritus faculty
at the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater,
where he started the undergraduate social work program.
And he was also faculty member
at George Williams of Aurora University.
I am Sarah Hasenauer, I have a doctorate in social work
and I am currently the chair and a faculty member
at the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater.
So Chuck, I would like now to talk about
the "Social Work with Groups" textbook
and, you know, describe the textbook
and explain why an instructor
would want to adapt this textbook.
-: Thank you, Sarah.
"Social Work With Group:
Comprehensive Practice and Self-Care"
is kind of a mouthful,
but I'll get into the various aspects of that
as we move along here.
Let me talk a bit about what inspired me
to write this textbook.
In 1983, I began, for the first time,
to teach a course in social work with groups.
I prepared a lot of lectures on social work with groups,
and started giving those lectures when the semester began.
I noticed that the students weren't particularly thrilled
with what was going on in the classroom.
At the middle of the third week,
a student stayed after class and she said to me,
"Dr. Zastrow, I don't quite know how to say this,
and I hope this is not going to affect my final grade,
but I and a number of students in the class
don't believe that you can teach a course
on social work with groups by just lectures.
What you need to do is more of a laboratory approach,
get students involved in presenting theoretical material,
and in them engaging the students in the class
in exercises that incorporate that theoretical material."
I thought about this, and at the next class session,
I said to the students,
"You know, this student has come up to me,
and said, maybe this course isn't really teaching you
how to run groups.
Would you be interested in a revision of this course,
where students would take turns,
leading the other students in groups?"
The class, then, becomes a laboratory
for teaching students how to lead groups.
You present theoretical material connected with groups,
and also lead the students in some exercises.
This proved to be quite useful.
I taught the course for three, four semesters after that,
and decided, "Hey, maybe this approach would work well
as a textbook that other instructors could use
in teaching students how to lead groups."
-: So why would somebody want to choose your book
over a different book?
-: Well, I think that it does use a laboratory approach,
it uses the work-text approach.
The text also covers
all the material
that one needs to know about social work with groups.
And, in addition, it's part of the Empowerment Series
of Cengage, where the material is geared
to 2015 E-Pass,
the educational policy and accreditation standards
of the Council on Social Work Education.
Faculty and programs in MSW courses
and in BSW courses can use the textbook
to document that appropriate content
is being covered in Social Work with groups.
There's chapters on group development theories,
leadership theories, how social work, group work,
is part of social work practice.
There is a chapter on developing norms and values in groups.
There is a chapter on task groups,
leadership groups, treatment groups,
and there's chapters on evaluating and terminating a group.
And also, there's a major focus on self-care.
It has become increasingly obvious in social work
that, in order for social workers to be of help to others,
they first need to take care of themselves.
So, there are a total of 130 strategies
that social work students can use to improve
their psychological well-being, their emotional well-being,
their social well-being, and their cognitive well-being.
Interestingly, the self-care strategies
are precisely the strategies
that social workers also need to convey to their clients,
so that clients can improve
on their psychological well-being, emotional well-being,
cognitive well-being and physiological development.
As I indicated, this text does incorporate
the content that is desired
by Council on Social Work Education
on social work with groups.
Also, this text is very useful
because it presents a number of self-care strategies,
like how to guide oneself in mindfulness,
self-care relaxation techniques,
how to change an unwanted emotion,
how to deal with dysfunctional behaviors
like gambling addiction
or an addiction to alcohol and other drugs.
For a variety of reasons,
I think this is a very useful textbook
for students and for social work practitioners.
-: Would you like to say anything
that's new with the 10th edition?
-: Yeah, we do incorporate the material on E-Pass,
we have a heavy focus on the self-care strategies,
and, for the first time for this revision,
I asked Dr. Sarah Hessenauer to be a co-author.
She has added immensely to updating the chapters,
to adding content on online therapy,
on social media, on technology and social work,
and on a variety of other areas.
I very much appreciate Dr. Hessenauer,
she got her doctorate from Loyola University,
she's chair of the Social Work Department
at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater,
and she has proven to be an excellent writer.
-: Well, thank you. And I'm really happy
to have joined in the process
of helping you with the Social Work with Group books.
So, we really encourage you all to take a look at our books
and hopefully adapt them for your classrooms.
Thank you for your time.