1. FOR EACH SET OF RESPONSES I HAVE THE REQUIRED
INSTRUCTIONS.. please be sure there are 8 peer responses..
each set has their own instructions
Guided Response:
Respond to at least two of your peers. In responses, provide
feedback on how peers’ key skills and qualifications will help
get the job to which they are applying. Additionally, provide at
least one suggestion on how your peers might emphasize their
relevant skills to ensure that they are called in for an interview.
BRANDI’S POST:
Program of study
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Early Childhood Education
The position for which you are applying
Elementary School Teacher
How your field of study has prepared you for this position
My field of study has prepared me to be a teacher by teaching
me the necessary skills for educating children. Through the
courses that I have taken through this program of study, I have
acquired the skills for curriculum planning, inclusion, and
collaboration with parents and staff members

2. A connection you made while volunteering that does not really
fit on your resume but will work in your Cover Letter
I volunteered in a second-grade classroom in 2001, while I was
in high school, as a teacher’s assistant that gave me great
insight into the workings of a classroom environment. This
allowed me to see a teacher in action throughout an
instructional day and give me the experience of working with
children.
MAXINE’S POST:
Program of study:
Bachelors of Arts in Education
The position for which you are applying
Special Education School Teacher
How your field of study has prepared you for this position:
In my field yes and no. Yes because I have learned so much in
correct terminology and what our children need in a teacher. No
because as a teacher I now Know that I will always be learning
new ways to understand our students.
A connection you made while volunteering that does not really
fit on your resume but will work in your Cover Letter:
As I moved to Texas I was able to see how families are
everything. I was involved in all 3 of my children's learning and

3. afterschool activities as a cares volunteer, substitute teacher,
coach or team mom. Being able to see what the teachers are all
about helped me to understand as a parent what I needed to do
to help my children at home. Now that I am proceeding in the
teaching field I learned so many techniques and values from
other teachers and coaches.
Respond to Peers:
Review your classmates’ posts, and respond to at least two of
your peers by Day 7. When responding to your classmates,
please provide feedback on their examples of good and poor
critical thinking skills. Discuss additional ways one can think
more critically. Each participation post should be a minimum of
75 words.
BRANDON’S POST:
·
Explain at least five elements of critical thinking that you found
in the reading material
.
Like I stated in week 1, “Whether you realize it, or not critical
thinking is involved in every decision made throughout your
life. A critical thinker evaluates the situation and uncovers the
links connected to the unknown. However, the individual is
ultimately responsible in determining whether the unknown is
the right or wrong thing to do”. In my opinion we do this with
the list elements below:
Transforming Knowledge –
is an element in which the author (you) coverts the information
to reader in the most basic of forms. Its providing a sense of

4. clarity.
Analyzing
– In this process we dissect the information to determine the
true cause of something or what lead to it. Basically, it is
understanding the cause and effect of things.
Discriminating
– This element compares and contrast the significance of the
circumstances presented. Ranking them findings to see what the
main factors are.
Predicting
– developing a plan that could solve the problem or effect the
overall consequences.
Logical reasoning
– This element involves piecing back the dissected information
to bring about a conclusion or summary on how to fix t what
was broken.
·
Search the Internet, media, or the Ashford University Library,
and find an example in which good critical thinking skills are
being demonstrated by the author or speaker. Summarize the
content and explain why you think it demonstrates good critical
thinking skills
.
This author demonstrates good critical thinking skills because
they show the uses of information seeking. This trait involves
“searching for evidence, facts, or knowledge by identifying
relevant sources and gathering objective, subjective, historical,
and current data from those sources” (Scheffer, 2001, Critical
Thinking Skills). For instance, Bauer used credible and reliable
sources. To include HCCC or Human-caused climate change and

5. the IPCC or Intergovernmental panel on climate change. They
also provide knowledge on how to obtain the PDF file. This
article basically summarizes how the world is contributing to
the climate change issue. Bauer (2015) outlined that, “most of
the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of
greenhouse gases caused by human activities” (pg. 627, para.
3).
·
Search the Internet, media, or the Ashford University Library,
and find an example in which the author or speaker lacks good
critical thinking skills. Summarize the content and explain why
you think it demonstrates the absence of good, critical thinking
skills
.
Just to clarify. Ian Plimer wrote the original article “Let’s not
pollute minds with carbon fears”. Johnson and several scientists
review the article and pointed out the misleading evidence.
This by far was a hard find, but I did find an example of bad
critical thinking. The person who thought about this did not
think clearly, rationally or use credible sources. Plimer article
“Let’s not pollute minds with carbon fears” mentioned, “It has
never been shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive
global warming” (Johnsons, 2019, Ian Plimer op-ed in The
Australian again presents long list of false claims about climate
). The article summarizes that all the climate change data the
media puts out to the public are false. This article demonstrates
the absence of good, critical thinking skills due to the lack of
Intellectual Perseverance. This trait is “having a consciousness
of the need to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of
difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations” (Scheffer, 2001,
Critical Thinking Skills). The author uses nonsense to justify
the scientific data gathered. They also failed to use the analyze
part of critical thinking, no credible research was provided.

6. References:
Johnson, S. (2019, November 22). Ian Plimer op-ed in The
Australian again presents long list of false claims about climate.
Retrieved from
https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/ian-plimer-op-ed-in-the-
australian-again-presents-long-list-of-false-claims-about-
climate/ (Links to an external site.)
Scheffer, & Rubenfeld, (2001). "Critical Thinking:
Critical Thinking Skills ( (Links to an external site.)
http://www.umich.edu/~elements/probsolv/strategy/ctskills.htm
(Links to an external site.)
Valuable Intellectual Traits ( (Links to an external site.)
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.cetla.howard.edu/new_showcase/lectures/docs/jones
/intraits.html
BAUER, H. H. (2015). Climate-Change Science or Climate-
Change Propaganda? Journal of Scientific Exploration, 29(4),
621–636.
AREALE’S POST:
Elements of Critical Thinking
For some individuals, the common misconception of critical
thinking is that it is merely a skill. However, in the article
Common Misconceptions of Critical Thinking
, the concept of critical thinking has evolved far beyond logical
reasoning. Contributors Sharon Bailin, Roland Case, Jerrold

7. Coombs and Leroi Daniels (1999), speak to the concept of
critical thinking and demonstrates what it can be once
developed in practice. Critical thinking is a transferable skill
used to develop or enhance other elements such as, mental
operations, processes, procedures, behaviors, and practices.
Applied Critical Thinking: An Article
In
Common Misconceptions of Critical Thinking
, critical thinking incorporates all of these elements. Critical
thinking as a procedure suggests reducing critical thinking into
steps to accomplish the bigger objective (Bailin, Case, Coombs
& Daniels1999). Critical thinking as a mental process involves
attending a school curriculum to obtain a collection of skills to
utilize in all aspects of life. For example; displaying the ability
to analyze, classify, evaluate, sequence, synthesize, translate or
abstract within a task to fulfill a process (Bailin, Case, Coombs
& Daniels1999). In addition to the
Common Misconceptions of Critical Thinking
article,
Valuable Intellectual Traits
demonstrates a higher level of critical thinking, which I found
very interesting and valuable (Valuable intellectual traits,
2014).
Fake News: A Lack of Critical Thinking
Fake news would be a good example of the lack of critical
thinking where the source, misinformation or other
characteristics in the fake news is used to distinguish its
credibility. Otherwise fake news is misinformation and
misguidance. The video
Fake News
provides insights of how social media uses misinformation to
spread gossip or aid a personal agenda (Tan, & Walko, &

8. Dimoff, 2018). According to University Librarian Kelly
Diamond (2018)
“the problem now is fake news is so readily shared through
social media”
some of this fake news contains
“propaganda, hokes, pranks... all kinds of social media
platforms and gets shared much more quickly”
(1:34-1:59).
References
Bailin, S., Case, R., Coombs, J. R., & Daniels, L. B. (1999).
Common misconceptions of critical thinking.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31
(3), 269-283. doi:10.1080/002202799183124
Tan, K., & Walko, D. S. (Executive Producers), Dimoff, D.
(Producer). (2018). Fake news: Part 1 [Video segment]. In
How to recognize fake news
[Streaming video]. Films On Demand database
Valuable intellectual traits. (2014 , September). Retrieved from
http://www.cetla.howard.edu/new_showcase/lectures/docs/jones
/intraits.html
Guided Response:
Due by Day 7 (Monday).
Respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings. Your
responses should be a minimum of 100 words each and should
either elaborate on a key point a peer has made or seek to gain
additional information.
JOANNE’S POST:

9. First of all, we need to ask some questions pertaining to
program itself;
Who is the target population? What are the main goals of the
program?
The intended target is Eastern Kentucky and the very rural
towns. This section of the United States lives in poverty, and
while the government has tried to revitalize, there almost seems
no hope for the small towns. “The median household income
there is barely above the poverty line, at $22,296. The
unemployment rate is 12.7 percent. The disability rate is nearly
as high, at 11.7 percent. Nearly half of Clay County is obese”
(Lowry, 2014, para. 4).
The benefits of employing privatization include lesser
participation of government, lowered costs, probably better
response towards the people’s requirements and accommodating
service conditions. The cons include personal avarice, uniform
responses in place of addressing individual problems,
insufficient assets and failure to adequately offer the agreed
services.
The main goals of the implemented program are to reduce those
in poverty, provide new jobs and reduce unemployment, and
even, perhaps, increase the life expectancy span by educating on
health. This being the case, I do believe that the county should
actually consider implementing the program and take bids from
other agents. A collaboration may work better than having
funding be one-sided. For the health and disability issues, the
county can call on other agencies to bid on funding a program
specifically designed to help the people regulate their personal
health issues. Parallel to this, the county should implement a
program for the unemployed population.

10. To evaluate success would be to compare the practices that have
already been tried, such as government aid and private aid. The
article mentions that neither of these have truly worked, and so
this collaboration would take the advantages of both the county
itself, and other agents.
Some advantages of public funding include: a purpose set by
legislation, focus on functions usually impacting significant
groups in society, having the most money and more likely to
award large grants/contracts, more likely to pay all project cost
and/or cover indirect costs, and easier to find information about
and to stay current on project needs/interests. Likewise, some
advantages of private funding include: they are more likely to
focus on emerging issues, new needs, populations not yet
recognized as "special interests”, they are often willing to pool
resources with other funders, and they offer a wide range in size
of available grants -- some can make very large awards, others
are strictly for small local projects.
Lowrey, A. (2014, June 26) What’s the matter with eastern. The
New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/magazine/whats-the-
matter-with-eastern-kentucky.html?_r=2
TANISHA’S POST:
The Lovely People County Board of Eastern Kentucky has
considered developing a program order to bring jobs back into
its community. Give education incentives to young children in
kindergarten all the way to High School in order for them to
complete their College education order for the people of the
rural county of clay to continue to survive. Having privatized
services is an effort to improve their cost effectiveness and

11. quality of the county in order to bring more jobs and job
training to the community. The advantages and challenges that
they face are to deliver quality product to the customers and
consumers without reducing any cost but insuring that the
product is of high quality in order to beat the competition. The
rural areas are far from any highways or interstates. The
communities are small and spread apart. Its roads are not up to
standards for transporting products or goods in and out. Many
of the county's population do not have a good economical
stature in order to travel. With this being said this section is at
the lower income end living in poverty with no hope for these
small towns that are affected. In some places, decades of growth
have failed to raise incomes, and of late, poverty has become
more concentrated not in urban areas but in rural ones.In many
cases, a primary problem in poor rural areas is the very fact that
they’re rural. With the implemented of these new programs it
would help laid-off coal miners and others find new jobs and
help reduce the unemployment rates. The problem comes from
the big northern companies rapping the region of its resources.
Some concerted effort by those inside and outside the region to
begin improving the schools, providing economic incentives and
training for local businesses to begin filling in the gaps left by
mining, and a willingness to stay the course for many years
rather than giving up--as so many of the "War on Poverty"
programs ended up. That "historic lack of investment in human
capital" is something that must be overturned, and that will only
come from large scale efforts at many levels of government and
private enterprise working together. More focus should be
placed on human capital from education to health and reducing
the poverty rate in these rural areas.
Guided Response:
Due by Day 7 (Monday).

12. Respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings. Your
responses should be a minimum of 100 words each and should
either elaborate on a key point a peer has made or seek to gain
additional information.
SHAWNTOBIA’S POST:
Throughout our courses I learned how important the Health and
Human Services field is to individuals in society. Each course
placed emphasis on the traits and skills that are necessary for a
Health and Human Services professional to help others in their
time of need. These courses provided me with the information
and tools that will aide in helping others make the necessary
changes needed in their life to succeed. I feel as though I am
well equipped to resolve the issues that individuals are faced
with by educating them on their options and providing them
with assistance. Respecting others regardless of who they are
and what they are going through as well as finding ways to
continuously educate myself on various topics within the field
stands out to me the most. For instance, regardless of one’s
culture, values, or beliefs, we must be respectful, open-minded,
non-judgmental, and empathetic to others. Educating ourselves
and receiving training on individual’s differences will help me
gain an understanding of the diverse backgrounds they come
from, the values and beliefs they live by, and how these factors
have an impact on their behavior, experiences, and lifestyle.
This is key to providing the support, information, and resources
they need to enhance their quality of life. Education and
training in our field will also prepare me for the different
scenarios I will encounter, inform me on policy updates, patient
education, and cultural awareness. This is important because we
owe it to our clients to be well versed on the issues affecting
them and their communities and be prepared to come up with

13. solutions to the issues that they are facing. Education and
training also plays a significant role in decision making. I
learned the importance of having all the required information to
help me assess and evaluate a situation and ensure I’m making
the best decision for that individual and their circumstance.
Decisions will be made in the best interest of the individual as
well as be results driven. Now, that I’m taking my last course I
feel prepared to enter the field, but I know my questions will
come once I actually begin to train and work. One thing that I’m
unsure of is if I want to still want to work in the Social Services
field or another field such as a mental health counselor or case
manager. Learning about the different fields has made me think
of different areas that I would enjoy working in.
NICOLE’S POST:
I especially take pride in discussions such as this being an
employee in the health and human services field currently. I
have learned so much from this field. I employ everything I
learn to my daily work life. One of the most important things
that I learned is how to actively listen. I was not a good listener
prior to the Human Services Leadership program. I would speak
to people and listen to a few words they said then I would
contemplate other things without active engaging in the
conversation. I takes extra work for me to give eye contact
which lets the speaker know I am listening, but it is worth it.
Competent communication is another strategy I have learned
and apply in my daily life. Competent communication means
communication in which all participants understand the message
being relayed in the manner which it is being shared while
engaging in an exchange of information. Competent
communication and active listening upgraded my interpersonal
communications which upgraded my career.

14. The decisions I make as a health and human services provider
are better because I have more knowledge to positively mix with
my experience. I use empathetic attitudes when dealing with
clients and I value management and staff equally. I will always
make the best business decisions that positively impact my
clients. During the trying time of COVID-19, I have been
sacrificing personal time to make sure my clients have access to
everything they need. I understand that as a health and human
services professional I am tasked with the responsibility of
going above and beyond for my clients and staff. I also learned
that constant training, learning, and preparation is imperative to
be an effective leader.
The questions I have are more about other experiences as health
and human service professionals. I am curious as to strategies
that others use to manage their staff and their own caseloads. I
am a good handle on my staff and work, but I always sacrifice
my personal time to make sure everything runs smoothly. I
think I put my job first sometimes which is not fair to my
family. My question is how are people managing the work and
home balance? I understand a lot of people are home, but I am
not since I am an essential worker, so this question mostly
relates to when you were out every day with work. Thank you
for responses and I hope everyone is remaining safe.
AN example of peer response:
Hi Shawntobia,
Cultural diversity places a major role in every day life. it is
very important to have certain programs or training groups in
place especially in the communities of where the diversity is
among. Cultural diversity helps especially as a social workers to

15. better understand that individual culture .As a medical assistant
now i try to always be proactive in listening , accepting, and
always welcoming them and their ideas as well for their own
health. I never try to impose my own personally values on theirs
but I do try and give an honest opinion overall. You did a great
job on this post.