BSW students find challenges are never ending at elementary school

Marie Brown (left) and June French

     May 1, 2008  - The little girl was insistent. Nobody was going to convince her she had to return to her classroom. Period.

     June French and Marie Brown, students in the IU School of Social Work BSW program had tried every argument they could think of to get this pint-size bull-dog to return to her classroom at Indianapolis Public School 83 on the city’s northeastside.

      The little girl would tell them yes, she had thought about whatever consequences the two women said she might suffer by being out of class.

      Then a teacher passed by, looked at what was going on and asked the little girl if she wanted the teacher to call that special telephone number again. On a previous occasion, the teacher had pretended to call a fake number to report the little girl’s actions.

      The words had barely left the teacher’s mouth when the little girl got up and returned to her classroom. With all their skills and training, it was an imaginary number that got action, Brown and French noted.

     It was another day and another lesson to be absorbed by the two women spending their spring practicum as school social workers working as interns with the social worker assigned to the elementary school.

     French and Brown and had become friends at Ivy Tech, where they both earned Associate Degrees before entering the BSW program. Self-described nerds, they were the type of students who sat at the front of their classes, were always the first to get their school books and had color-coded planners.

      Both loved helping others, an attitude that made them decide to pursue a career in social work and they saw the chance to work at the school as a way to build skills working with children. Even so, their duties at an elementary school with hundreds of students and a never-ending supply of problems to resolve were an eye-opening experience.

       “It was very intense,” Brown said of the workload she and French faced daily at the school.  Brown and French as well as a third intern were there to help the school’s social worker. “We all have more work than we can shake a stick at,” she added.

       “It’s learning every single day,” French said. “It’s like emergency care, like being on the front line.”

     The school has a large population of African-American students who for the most part had never seen anyone like Brown and French, young professional women. In essence, the young girls looked at the two African-American BSW students as stars and began making up reasons so they could come into the office to see them.

      “Every morning they will come in and give us a hug,” June said.

     The pace of work was so fast the two women had little time to try and remember what they had learned or read about dealing with a particular problem. “A lot of it was just gut instinct,” Brown said.

     French and Brown quickly learned that understanding what the students were dealing with at home affected their lives at school, too.

      For example, they had to find some hygiene products for an elementary student who showed up for school after her father ordered her out of her home on a Sunday and had come to school on Monday after spending the night at a friend’s house.

     After she arrived at school, she got into an argument with another student who was teasing her. It helped them to know she was probably at the end of her rope and wasn’t in the mood to deal with the teasing, Brown and French said. After all, the little girl wasn’t even sure if she could go home that night.

     On the other hand, they had to explain to her that while they understood she was upset, getting into arguments with other students would just add to her problems.

     Or there was the student who missed a number of days of school. When they looked into her case, they learned the student stayed at home to look after her younger nieces and nephews because her sister had to go to work.

     The student told the social workers, “If she doesn’t work, we don’t have food, a place to stay.”

     Every day was not just about coming to school and doing homework for many of the students, French and Brown explained. It was surviving problems a home where the water might have been turned off to not getting enough to eat. They recalled one student who stopped in their office one morning and ate three doughnuts because she hadn’t eaten since the afternoon before.

     They both worked with parents as well. They made home visits, asking if there was anything they could do to help the parents be better parents. Some of the parents saw school as the equivalent of day care and once the students walked out of the door in the morning, they saw it as the school’s responsibility to teach and care for their children.

      The experience left both women hoping to find career positions where they would have the time to feel like they were making a positive change in someone’s life.

      Still, French said she doubted she would forget the faces or the emotional toll thinking about the hardships these young children are already dealing with.

     For more information contact Rob Schneider, IU School of Social Work, at 317-278-0303 or at robschn@iupui.edu