As human services majors, we are all helpers in some way. Whether we are teachers, social workers or aids. We all do something similar. We help others in some way to make their lives better. Three characteristics of effective helpers that I believe is most important are openness and willingness to change, sense of identity, authenticity and honesty and acceptance of one's power. Yes, there are many other characteristics of effective helpers, but I feel these are the three most important. Openness and willingness to change is a huge part of being a helper. You have to be flexible in more ways than one. As a teacher, I have to hold this quality for my job. I can not take care of all my babies the same. When parents give me a request for their …show more content…
I personally have been through this with a coworker who was very mean to me. She use to be the lead of infants and the power basically went to her head. She would talk about everyone behind their backs. The only people she would be nice to is the parents. This girl literally hates me so she tried to do anything to get me in trouble. Everything was blamed on me, she would yell at me until I cried, she broke down my self-esteem, I wasn’t allowed to do anything in the classroom, I had to ask permission to do everything, etc. I got to a point where I hated my job and I was constantly having anxiety attacks at work and was extremely depressed. I talked about it once to my boss and of course, she denied everything and I had no proof so I was at a loss. After that, I was punished by her and she was even more nasty to me. It was to a point where my coworker would take the blame for things so I would get yelled at less. My boss eventually saw this and fired her right on the spot and made me the new lead teacher of infants. This is currently where I am now and I make the room an happy, open environment for everyone to feel welcome. I don’t want anyone feeling the way I felt when she was lead. These are the few reasons why openness and willingness to change, sense of identity, authenticity and honesty and acceptance of one's power is a big part of being an effective helper. I feel all of the characteristics in this chapter sum up an effective helper but I feel that these three are the most important. As you can see my personal experience has brought me a long way and I feel it will continue to bring me further. I will use my knowledge from my past to help strengthen myself of being an effective helping