1. Department of Sociology and Social Work Social Work Program
Introducing Transformative Experiential Learning in BSW Education: The SNAP Project
Abigail C. Tilton, Ph.D. & Mark Sandel, MSSW
Assignment Background
Assignment Instructions
Reflection Paper
Excerpt from a final paper
Despite Social Work’s commitment to social justice, integration of social justice into pedagogy has presented challenges to social work educators using traditional teaching methods. Birkenmaier et al. (2010) suggested that effective social justice education must be transformative and use innovative teaching methods intended to have powerful and enduring effects on students entering the profession. Thus, we chose an experiential approach to assist students understand an essential social welfare program and build empathy and sensitivity, cultivate social justice orientations, and develop expertise.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was selected because it is the largest nutrition assistance program in the United States and many clients participate.
The assignment begins with each student developing a real or hypothetical family profile that includes several members. At a minimum students provide the gender and age of each family member. Students developed financial profiles that would allow for the maximum benefit for their profiled family. To do so, they must use the SNAP estimator available at
Next they develop a 30 day, 90 meal menu for the family that conforms to the USDA guidelines found at choosemyplate.gov . From this menu, students then create a complete shopping list.
The students then visit a local grocery store and “shop” for the products on their list, making adjustments as necessary so as not to exceed their SNAP allotment. Students then complete a final adjusted shopping list to reflect their final purchases.
Due to the high cost of of organic, lean, “healthy” food products, students are challenged to create a menu that is nutritious and healthy, but within reach of a SNAP budget.
Students a complete a reflection paper that includes the following:
Introduction
Define Poverty
Your thoughts about the purpose of this project
Describe your “family”
How you found the amount of SNAP benefits you would receive including actual calculations and allotment
How you created your menus. How long did it take? Was it easy or hard?
Where you shopped and why you chose that store
What changes did you make to your original shopping list, if any? If changes were made, what changed and why?
What decisions did you make when adjusting your original shopping list?
How the process of shopping and adjusting your list make you feel?
Your opinion of the SNAP benefit allotment.
What changes should be made to the SNAP program – include at least two macro changes
Any understanding gained about living with a low income
The implications of the SNAP program for social work practice
At least three points learned from this experience
…I have learned how difficult it is to eat a nutritionally healthy diet on a food stamp budget. Previously, I had not paid attention to the prices of fresh, healthy produce and ingredients, nor had I paid attention to the major difference in price between high calorie, low nutrition processed and non-processed foods.
I have learned that healthy food is more expensive than highly processed food. The link between poverty and obesity is not simply because low income Americans choose to eat unhealthy, it is because that is all that the food stamp budget will provide. Healthier, non-processed foods are more expensive than processed foods, which explains why high calorie processed diets are often consumed by those living in poverty. The third thing that I learned from this experience is just how much planning goes into developing a menu on such a tight budget. It took me several hours to do the research on menu items, and several more hours to write out the shopping list for all of the ingredients. For this project, we did not
have to actually cook these meals, but if we had, it would have taken another hour or more every night to cook these meals as well. This may be impossible for a family in which the adult members work full-time jobs, or have multiple jobs.
This project has helped me better understand how hard it is for low-income parents to feed their families healthy meals on a SNAP budget
Emily Holston, Social Work major