For Charandry Only

HUMN 8110 Advance d Social Work Theory and Practice Week 1 – Social Work Issues (SW) AJIA MEUX: My daily routine initially involves a lot of mental preparation. I talk to people for a living. And I get people to talk to me about whatever is going on and going wrong in their lives. And so I'm always having to think about what I'm going to talk about next per student. I'm also thinking about who I need to see for the day. So I actually wake up thinking about who I need to see and what are we going to talk about. I think that social work theory informs practice. And social workers ta lk about having a toolbox. And there are all these different things inside of a toolbox that you use when you need to help a client. And I think theory is in that toolbox. It actually may be the box itself. I think the challenge sometimes is the practical application of theory on practice. How do you do it? Because theory oftentimes does not address working with say African American students from Southeast, DC that have multiple disabilities. So that's the challenge is how do you use theory from a practical perspective? My background is primarily women in trauma. I got my bachelor's degree in Criminology, masters in Social Work. I entered social work because I initially went to school to be a police officer. I wanted to work my way up to the CIA. And my soph omore year in college, I called the FBI to see what the requirements were. And they told me they don't take criminology majors. So I said, “OK, well, I'll just work my way up through the police department and go in to homicide.” And I went and worked at a group home for kids. And I went from there to a substance abuse facility for women. And it was there that I met my first social worker. And I was like, that's what I want to do. Her name was Janice. We had a counseling group for staff.

So that was our staf f development every week. We were put together in a room with a PhD in psych and an LCSW in California, and we had counseling as a staff. And I thought, what the work that they did was just so amazing, their ability to get into people's lives and help them bring out things that they never thought were affecting them present day. And that's when I said, "I want to do that." FEMALE SPEAKER: Are you asking me — AJIA MEUX: Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. Because I got an email from Carolyn and Jamie asking me what the status is of things. TWILAH ANTHONY: What I look for in a social worker is someone -- it's almost like a car salesman. I expect for someone to come in and be a great salesperson. They have to have personality. They have to be able to change gears. I mean I asked certain questions, more personal questions, when I'm interviewing social workers like, "What do you like? What do you do on your free time? What kinds of things s tress you out?" I don't ask the typical question like, "How long have you been working?" I really need to know about that person and how they relate to their families. And, are there any major crises in your family? And of course, they look at me like I'm crazy. You're getting a little bit too personal. But then I have to explain to them is that I have to know how they deal with their personal life and their personal issues in order to know that you're going to be able handle my students' crisis in the appr opriate way. And you don't have to be perfect. But if you had a bad relationship with a spouse or a boyfriend, and you were able to say, "I was devastated by it. I thought I was going to lose my mind." I need people to be real people. I don't want you to c ome in here like, "I've had a perfect life. And everything's hunky -dory." Then you're fake because that's not real. So I need you to be able to answer those questions. And I can pretty much see through if you're talking because you just want to get the job , or you're letting your hair down so I can see what you're going to be able to deal with it, because our students come with baggage. MALE SPEAKER: We're going to subtract 11, so that this is 0, so that it cancels out. AJIA MEUX: So Building for the Future is a private and special educations school for students ages 17 to 22. We provide special education services for four types of students:

students with emotional disturbance, students with learning disabilities, students who are classified OHI or Other Hea lth Impairment, and students who have multiple disabilities. My responsibility's meeting the behavioral, social, emotional needs of students. A learning disability is exactly what it says. You have more difficulty learning particular subjects than maybe ot her people. ED or Emotional Disturbance is when you have an unreasonable emotional response to typical stimuli. And that could cover a gamut of things between anger, sadness, guilt, rage, hopelessness, things like that. Multiple disabilities are a combinat ion of those things. Students that have maybe physical disability may be hearing impaired. They may be blind. They either fall under OHI or separate and not in those four. TWILAH ANT HONY: The school is a nontraditional school, which you have to be able to create your portfolio in order to earn external high school diploma. The external high school diploma is usually only offered to people who are 25 years and up, because they want you to have life experience. And they want you to create your portfolio on your life experience and the other criteria that follow. Well, what Carrie Pecover did, the founder, is she did research on how to make this kind of program work for students ages 17 to 22 who, in fact, had basically plateaued as far as what they were going to get in the traditional school because they felt like they weren't going to learn anything. So she did her research. And she was able to come across this CASAS assessment tool, that is an assessment tool used for adults. In doing that, she found that she could create a program that taught students more life and hands -on experience that would equip them more to be success ful and be a part of their community. The CASAS is a comprehensive adult learning system for students in order for them to get life experiences. Life skills meaning that you're interpreting schedules, wages, union contracts, things like that that really he lp the students be able to function in a community. So we have your math class, which is consumer math. You have a life skills class where we're talking about everything. We're talking about relationships. We're talking about banking. We're talking about -- you name it, we're talking about it. We have the employability class, which is teaching the students how to write a resume, how to do a cover letter. We do mock interviews. We do internships in order for them to really be successful in class. And then we have our language arts class, which is teaching the students how to write. And when they're writing, they're not just writing paragraph. If they have a consumer complaint, they're learning how to write a consumer complaint letter to send to somebody if the y have a complaint. But all of that is making sure that they are a well - rounded individual. So before we extend ourselves again of Leon, just make sure that he's serious, that he's going to be committed about moving forward. AJIA MEUX: OK. We'll have that conversation today. TWILAH ANTHONY: Social workers are definitely necessary in any school. And unfortunately, a lot of the public schools don't have counselors or social workers anymore. Social workers are important here because our students are emotionall y disturbed. And so although that's only one label of the students, they come with a lot of baggage. And so they need somebody to be able to help them sift through the information that they are holding. And a lot of the information that they're holding has nothing to do with school -- absolutely nothing. Their problems come before they hit the door, which is their community, whether it's, "My boyfriend left me, or my mom put me out, or I'm homeless, or I didn't have anything to eat." I mean it's just a whole -- you name it. They bring it. And so the social workers with their knowledge and knowing how to ask a question or get the information out without actually making the student relive th e information necessarily is very critical. Because assessing them when they get off the elevator determines how they're going to be productive in the classroom. AJIA MEUX: Again, probation. And then, so from February to now, you've just been violating. And so you've been getting rearrested. And so tomorrow -- LEON: I just got -- AJIA MEUX: One of the ways tha t this job and the issues of these students has begun to affect me is that when I wake up in the morning, I am trying to find out who got killed the night before, because we've lost one student. We've had at least four shot. And doing this work that is sor t of like a by -product. But right now, we're 100% African American. This is chronically criminal, chronically truant. These are the students that have been kicked out of most of the schools that they've been to for fighting. Most of them have been involved in drug -related offenses and activities. And so it's always there. It's always looming. TWILAH ANTHONY: There have been times where students didn't make it to class. And they had to spend a whole day with a social worker because whatever was going on in their community was just so devastating, that they couldn't make it through. And when you listen to some of the stuff that the students have revealed to me, in my personal life, it was like, "That wasn't critical to me." But it's his critical. It's not my c ritical. And that's what we need to understand. His critical and my critical are two different things.

And so knowing that and being able to understand that makes you understand that in order for a school like this to thrive, you have to have social worker s. You have to have qualified, good people person, people -generated social workers. They have to be pleasing. They have to have a upbeat -- they have to just be Ajia. © Laureate Education, Inc.