Being a School Social Worker

I always thought the first book I would write would be about all my experiences as school social worker. I have 29 years of memories, most great, some really, really hard. We used to have a joke, “you can’t make this shit up.” But it is true. Being a school social worker was so incredibly hard, sometimes terrifying, to be honest, but also exciting and so rewarding. It has taken me a long time to process it and get to a place where I can write about it. I think I have blocked a lot of it out. But the memories are starting to come back.

So hard to know where to start so I’ll just put random memories as they pop in.

I can remember a psychotic kiddo who would lose his shit but calm down the second I came in the room. He would say, “make them stop looking at me” and I ordered everyone to turn around. Then I could talk him down.

I remember a super strong woman who had 6 boys all elementary age. I first met her at Big Brothers Big Sisters. Then they were at one of my schools. She was such a great mom. But she had been hurt badly by the boy’s father in front of them in a far away state. Once, after the boys had been absent from school for a week, she called me and said she needed help. The boy’s father had convinced her to let him see the boys and came and got them. As soon as she found out it wasn’t going well, she went from crisis center to crisis center begging for bus tickets down there, across the United States, went into the house at night, busted her kids out in their pajamas, and went from crisis center to crisis center back here. It was unbelievable. I’d like to tell you that her boys all made it, but the strikes against African American males with a trauma history was too much to overcome, even with great parenting. They are all in jail.

I remember doing thousands of suicide protocols and helping tons of kids past that. But the ones who attempted and a couple who succeeded will never leave me.

I remember, unfortunately, being bitched out by a father about his daughter just before I left school at noon to get a cancer treatment. I wanted so badly to shut his mouth by telling him, but I doubt it would have made a difference.

I worked with 4 generations of one family. No kidding. When I was at Big Brothers/ Big Sisters, I knew the grandma, mom and little girl. The little girl then grew up and had a daughter who went to the elementary school I worked at and then showed back up in the middle school later. And then she had a baby shortly after she left.

I remember being so afraid of an escalated kid that I didn’t feel like I could touch my radio. I emailed and no one came to help me. He later ended up being one of my all time favorite kids.

I remember at one of the wealthier schools, a little girl and her mom who had escaped being held in the back woods of Kentucky by a crazy, abusive man who terrified them, and held them without electrity or running water. The little girl would talk and dictate stories and her teacher did not know how to handle it. So I’d have her go to my office and we wrote and wrote. When the mom got afraid the man was coming to get them, we took the little girls’ stories down to the county attorney and the mom was given full custody and a protective order. I remember they gave me a ceramic angel that I still have.

I remember before any bullying training, at a higher SES school, all the girls getting up and leaving when a girl sat down at the lunch table. The Principal gave all the girls consequences then almost caved into the pressure she got from parents to let them out of it. I told her I would quit if she caved.

I remember sitting on the front step of a home on the south side with a pregnant mom and I was pregnant for the first time and felt my baby kick and she told me what I was I was feeling.

I remember a kid that the teachers had me see three times a week, mostly to get him out of the classroom. I really liked that kid. He went to prison in middle school for robbing a convenience store with a sawed off shotgun. He later showed up at Eisenhower having turned his life around and thanked me for all I had done. He said that what I’d told him finally sunk in!

I remember getting called to the police station and put in an interrogation room. They told me to stop calling crime stoppers and call them directly and to stop going to a particular neighborhood on home visits because I’d interrupted several planned drug busts. Oops.

I remember a little bitty girl disclosing sexual abuse to me that we reported to DCF with pictures and everything so we had a really great case and the next day she didn’t show up. Her family came in to unenroll her the day when I wasn’t there. A teacher told me she pulled the girl aside and told her to keep telling when she got to her new school. All we could do is report to the police where they’d enrolled her when we got the records request. I still hope that little girl got help.

I remember some really tough kids that trusted me and we had such great break throughs in my office. And kids I had absolutely no idea how to help.

I can remember once in a group clinical supervision setting, we got talking about difficult child abuse situations and one by one we each busted out in tears and sobbed together for about an hour.

I can remember some horrible graphic sexual stuff that kids were into that we had to report, “kiddy porn” as the cops call it, and adult porn they watched. Kids are truly resilient and amazing with the crap they have to deal with. That stuff sticks with me even now. Images I have to block out that resurface from time to time.

I had a lot of frustrating staff members to deal with who truly didn’t get it. And so many amazing teachers that did so much for kids over the years. I loved the team approach, the way teachers give and love and give some more. I’ll never forget the support I personally received when I went through cancer. I have never felt so loved.

I worked with so many great Principals over the years. And my sweet Nancy and Angela, counselors. And school secretaries! Mary and Diane stick out and will forever be deep in my heart. They took care of all of us. Every day for years and years.

I remember the little girl whose mom had died who lived with us for awhile when her daddy was sick. And then she later played soccer for Scott. I run into her from time to time and she has become an amazing adult.

And the little girl whose mother died giving birth to her baby brother. They were from a culture where the dads weren’t involved in child care at all and here he was trying to raise a little girl and a newborn. The best thing I taught her was how to make ramen noodles.

And the little girl who only spoke spanish whose house had been robbed by gun point while she hid. There were zero Spanish therapists to refer her to so she drew pictures and we did the best we could to write the story down and then she read it over and over to her parents until she got better. That was way before we had any trauma training.

And the transgender Asian student who didn’t speak English who had no way to tell us what they needed and who they were. I was able to piece it together and communicate it to the psychiatrist. That was way way before we even knew transgender was a thing.

I remember doing year after year of divorce support groups. And child of alcoholics groups. One year I had to have a group for kids in one school whose parents had been murdered!

I remember having such great conversations with a bi sexual student who was being bullied by the Christian kids and trying to help bridge the gap between the two worlds, to build acceptance and understanding. And advocating and educating administrators about LGBTQ issues without really understanding the whole thing myself, frankly. And educating administrators on the rape culture of dress codes. Don’t get me started.

I remember two of my favorite people, school psychologists. Not that school psychologists are my favorite people, ha ha ha, but two in particular whom I loved. One I was super close to and loved, and one with whom our heated debates drew us close and made us appreciate one another. My, we had some heated arguments. I’d tell him to put his F***ing manual away and do what was right for kids.

As a school social worker, I was always the one in the meeting who was willing to “go there”. If there was something that needed to be said and everyone knew it, I was the one that would go ahead and say it. Someone once told me I had the gift of saying it in just the right way. But I just remember pissing a lot of people off. On a regular basis.

I remember early on, a kid in first grade cussing me out using the F word and throwing a phone at me. His mom was into Wiccan orgies. I told him he was making clear choices because if he’d wanted to hit me with the phone, he would have aimed better.

I remember a middle school girl who was so terrified she couldn’t talk because she had a sudden onset of schizophrenia and the voices were so loud they would knock her over in the hallway.

I remember reading a first grade primer book to a big tough middle school boy on his front porch after he’d been kicked out of school.

And the kid we had to get the police to follow us every time we had him ride with us to take him home. And the day he kicked me in the throat and called me the most horrendous things. I had to press charges against him. Thankfully, when I was on the stand, I couldn’t recall exactly what he’d call me. I visited him at the detention center and took him a cheeseburger. He asked me to ask his mom to please put some sheets on his bed before he came home. I was too scared of her to ask her anything. She tore up the Principal’s office once. The kid’s sister was at my house after school one day, braiding my daughter’s hair. When we were waiting to go into the courtroom to testify, a teacher on one side of me said she felt I had violated the kid’s rights. The cop on the other side of me told me I should walk my kids to and from school for awhile.

I remember the time a father told me he was going to kill a guy. I was too terrified to report it (thankfully he didn’t give me a name). I asked my Principal what to do and he said he’d think about it. The next day, he brought me into the office and told the Dad in front of me “I hear you are scaring my social worker.” The guy apologized and said he hadn’t meant it.

I remember the scary drug addict who was beating his wife that came up to the school and asked me why his daughter was afraid to come to school. I said because she was afraid to leave him alone with her mom. Later, I asked his probation officer to please send him to rehab before jail. He called me from rehab to thank me. I ran into the assistant DA at a party a few weeks later and he told me I had balls.

I wonder how many DCF reports I made over the years. How much tobacco and pot I took off kids (and called the police). And how many faculty, inservice, and IEP meetings I attended. I wonder how many school lunches I ate over the years. How many interns I had…How many clubs I sponsored and how many service projects did we do…how many bully protocols….how many office referrals I wrote…how many fire drills we had…how many lunch bunches I did.

I loved being a school social worker. I couldn’t have done it one more day, though. God Bless school social workers.