Part V: Community Experience
EXPERIENCE
For my community experience assignment, I met with a friend of my sister's, Sarah, who is a social worker in Salt Lake City. My sister got her bachelors and masters degrees in social work, but hasn't been involved in the profession for about 10 years for various reasons associated with the job, her past, and her personal goals, so I was very curious how the interview with her friend would go.
The whole point of social work is for struggling families, individuals, etc. to improve their well-being. It is a profession geared towards getting individuals back on the right track in order for them to have the highest chance for success. I truly admire those who choose to pursue careers in social work, because it is most definitely an extremely difficult line of work and the things they must deal with are extremely difficult to witness at times. I was glad to interview my sister's friend and get her feedback about her profession.
Overall it was a truly positive experience. She told me about all of the time and resources that are used in order to give children and struggling families much needed assistance. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go the route of interviewing a social worker, especially after some of my sister's experiences. But my sister was kind enough to recommend me to Sarah who is still in the career field.
I went to her house in Saratoga Springs. We went to her side room office and basically just got into the discussion pretty quickly. I began by asking her what she did, what she likes, what she could go without, etc. We then got into more serious questions about the types of cases that she sees regularly, including: abuse, neglect, etc. It was with these more serious questions that I began to have some serious disruptions.
DISRUPTIONS
I wasn't sure what to really expect. I sort of went in knowing what social workers do, but not really thinking it would be that bad in a Utah city because Utah prides itself on wholesome family values and I have always been one of those people as well. As we began the interview, however, I knew immediately that she was going to open my eyes to a whole other world that people experience in Utah. She began telling me how she works with 20 or so cases at any given time and how many of them involve sexually abused kids. As she told me more, I was truly shocked at the idea of how many kids grow up under these circumstances in Utah. My disruption mostly had to do with the idea that all of these awful and evil things happen to people here in Utah. I was raised with ideas of safety and security and how Utah, especially Utah county, were almost untouched from the issues and challenges that much of the world faces. Obviously as a college student, I've matured a little bit. Bit despite the fact that I have grown and matured, I still don't think I was prepared for some of the cases that she told me about. With her many examples, I was beginning to wonder things like, "how have I not seen this before? I know we have our problems but I still had no idea how many children in our state were living in certain conditions. If this is true, then that means Utah isn't as safe as I want it to be and also means we aren't as untouched from the rest of society as I thought we were."
Another aspect of disruption that tied in with the original disruption was how, if this is going on in Utah, then how is it not a more well known thing? I wanted to find somebody to blame. Surely there must be people who know and just keep quiet about it. I was disrupted because I believed that there are surely people who can help with these circumstances. Similar to the other disruption, I grew up believing/ wanting to believe that others and I would certainly jump in whenever I saw some type of injustice or mistreatment. But the fact that there is so much abuse, especially towards children, this disrupted me because it meant I would have to admit that I was wrong and also I would have to admit that we aren't as aware and willing to intervene as I believe we are in this state.
IMPLICATIONS FOR MY FUTURE CLASSROOM
I think one of the biggest implications this experience had on me for my future classrooms is for me to just get to know my students and establish relationships with them (professionally of course) to where they feel comfortable confiding in me when they need to. That was one of the biggest things that Sarah emphasized. She truly believes that if more people were willing to be there for some of these kids and give them opportunities to be heard, that many of individuals she works with would not be even close in the situations that they are in now. Some of the most helpful times for these kids are for someone to just sit down, and take the time to listen to them and get to know them. I want my future students to feel like they can talk to me and trust me. I realize I am not a counselor or anything, but I still want them to trust and come to me when they need help.
I would also want to make sure I have contacts or know the right routes to go, in case there is something I encounter and realize needs to be dealt with at a professional level. This means I will need to stay up to date and regularly familiarized with these routes and professionals in order to provide my students with the most reliable and promising help that they can find. Again, this means I need to establish an environment where they feel comfortable and trusting.
Obstacles would definitely be potentially not knowing what to do if I come to learn something about a child's home life that is extreme and needs to be dealt with. There are also the legal ramifications that I would need to understand or overcome. Many times, people don't know where the line is and are either afraid of crossing it or have crossed it forever ago, so I would need to overcome and be familiar with those obstacles as well. Another obstacle may be that I develop certain friendships with some students and therefore feel tempted to not maintain my professional relationship/ behavior with them. This is definitely an obstacle that many teachers deal with and quite often is a reason for teachers getting let go. I personally had a teacher who was a great woman. Super kind and friendly and caring. But she established inappropriate relationships with some people in my grade, to the point that she would give them money and let them skip class to go get food.
It was truly a great experience meeting with Sarah. Some of her stories and examples were definitely hard to hear, but they aren't things that we should simply avoid because they are unpleasant. It needs to be known that these things are decently common and problems, even in our little bubble of Utah. You can't fix a problem if you aren't willing to acknowledge that it is there.
For my community experience assignment, I met with a friend of my sister's, Sarah, who is a social worker in Salt Lake City. My sister got her bachelors and masters degrees in social work, but hasn't been involved in the profession for about 10 years for various reasons associated with the job, her past, and her personal goals, so I was very curious how the interview with her friend would go.
The whole point of social work is for struggling families, individuals, etc. to improve their well-being. It is a profession geared towards getting individuals back on the right track in order for them to have the highest chance for success. I truly admire those who choose to pursue careers in social work, because it is most definitely an extremely difficult line of work and the things they must deal with are extremely difficult to witness at times. I was glad to interview my sister's friend and get her feedback about her profession.
Overall it was a truly positive experience. She told me about all of the time and resources that are used in order to give children and struggling families much needed assistance. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go the route of interviewing a social worker, especially after some of my sister's experiences. But my sister was kind enough to recommend me to Sarah who is still in the career field.
I went to her house in Saratoga Springs. We went to her side room office and basically just got into the discussion pretty quickly. I began by asking her what she did, what she likes, what she could go without, etc. We then got into more serious questions about the types of cases that she sees regularly, including: abuse, neglect, etc. It was with these more serious questions that I began to have some serious disruptions.
DISRUPTIONS
I wasn't sure what to really expect. I sort of went in knowing what social workers do, but not really thinking it would be that bad in a Utah city because Utah prides itself on wholesome family values and I have always been one of those people as well. As we began the interview, however, I knew immediately that she was going to open my eyes to a whole other world that people experience in Utah. She began telling me how she works with 20 or so cases at any given time and how many of them involve sexually abused kids. As she told me more, I was truly shocked at the idea of how many kids grow up under these circumstances in Utah. My disruption mostly had to do with the idea that all of these awful and evil things happen to people here in Utah. I was raised with ideas of safety and security and how Utah, especially Utah county, were almost untouched from the issues and challenges that much of the world faces. Obviously as a college student, I've matured a little bit. Bit despite the fact that I have grown and matured, I still don't think I was prepared for some of the cases that she told me about. With her many examples, I was beginning to wonder things like, "how have I not seen this before? I know we have our problems but I still had no idea how many children in our state were living in certain conditions. If this is true, then that means Utah isn't as safe as I want it to be and also means we aren't as untouched from the rest of society as I thought we were."
Another aspect of disruption that tied in with the original disruption was how, if this is going on in Utah, then how is it not a more well known thing? I wanted to find somebody to blame. Surely there must be people who know and just keep quiet about it. I was disrupted because I believed that there are surely people who can help with these circumstances. Similar to the other disruption, I grew up believing/ wanting to believe that others and I would certainly jump in whenever I saw some type of injustice or mistreatment. But the fact that there is so much abuse, especially towards children, this disrupted me because it meant I would have to admit that I was wrong and also I would have to admit that we aren't as aware and willing to intervene as I believe we are in this state.
IMPLICATIONS FOR MY FUTURE CLASSROOM
I think one of the biggest implications this experience had on me for my future classrooms is for me to just get to know my students and establish relationships with them (professionally of course) to where they feel comfortable confiding in me when they need to. That was one of the biggest things that Sarah emphasized. She truly believes that if more people were willing to be there for some of these kids and give them opportunities to be heard, that many of individuals she works with would not be even close in the situations that they are in now. Some of the most helpful times for these kids are for someone to just sit down, and take the time to listen to them and get to know them. I want my future students to feel like they can talk to me and trust me. I realize I am not a counselor or anything, but I still want them to trust and come to me when they need help.
I would also want to make sure I have contacts or know the right routes to go, in case there is something I encounter and realize needs to be dealt with at a professional level. This means I will need to stay up to date and regularly familiarized with these routes and professionals in order to provide my students with the most reliable and promising help that they can find. Again, this means I need to establish an environment where they feel comfortable and trusting.
Obstacles would definitely be potentially not knowing what to do if I come to learn something about a child's home life that is extreme and needs to be dealt with. There are also the legal ramifications that I would need to understand or overcome. Many times, people don't know where the line is and are either afraid of crossing it or have crossed it forever ago, so I would need to overcome and be familiar with those obstacles as well. Another obstacle may be that I develop certain friendships with some students and therefore feel tempted to not maintain my professional relationship/ behavior with them. This is definitely an obstacle that many teachers deal with and quite often is a reason for teachers getting let go. I personally had a teacher who was a great woman. Super kind and friendly and caring. But she established inappropriate relationships with some people in my grade, to the point that she would give them money and let them skip class to go get food.
It was truly a great experience meeting with Sarah. Some of her stories and examples were definitely hard to hear, but they aren't things that we should simply avoid because they are unpleasant. It needs to be known that these things are decently common and problems, even in our little bubble of Utah. You can't fix a problem if you aren't willing to acknowledge that it is there.
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