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School Social Work Now!
Supporting Innovative Practice, Effective
Leadership & Applied Research
October 2011 - Vol 2, Issue 10 |
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Bookmark These |
Some Free, Some Not
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Greetings! | |
ACSSW has received a request from member Steve Button in Lewiston, ID. Steve is on a committee that is reviewing and developing a tool to evaluate school social workers. As you know, this is a task many school districts face, ie, finding an appropriate evaluation form that reflects the practice of school social work. Please email Steve a copy of the social work evaluation form used in your district. If you also send ACSSW a copy, we will place the collection on the website for easy access to all.
In addition to the New Orleans Conference scheduled for January 30-31, 2012 (more below), ACSSW is busy planning the 3rd National Summit on School Social Work Research and Practice, June 24-26, near Chicago. We are issuing an
ACSSW CALL FOR PROPOSALS
with a deadline of December 10, 2011. Please take a moment to review the online submission form. Pass the information on to others who might be interested in sharing their talents with colleagues from across the country!
Now, back to New Orleans!! ACSSW will host a first-ever Louisiana-based school social work conference in exciting New Orleans from January 30-31, 2012! In collaboration with the Louisiana Department of Education, Tulane University, Louisiana State University, and school social work leaders, this program is designed to address the needs and interests of school social workers.
Training on action research projects and process, extended workshops on psychotropic medications, trauma and school violence, LGBTQ issues and concerns, PBIS, evidence-based resources, school social work Ethics and Boundaries, and more will all be available to you.
The New Orleans Conference Brochure describing the
Evolving Roles in School Social Work Practice program is downloadable now for your review. School teams of 3 or more will be granted a discount when registrations are submitted together via fax or snail mail. Talk to your colleagues! Bring your supervisor!! Register online now.
Take advantage of the weekend preceding the conference to exlore New Orleans. Check out Three Days in New Orleans to plan your mini-vacation. Enjoy discovering the bayous, Garden District, art, museums, music, food, French Quarter, architecture . . . The list goes on and on. Learn about Free Things to Do in New Orleans.
Room reservations can be made at the Drury Inn & Suites, New Orleans for a low $104/night, single through quad. The conference price is available 3 days before and after Monday, January 30th, so plan to come early. And be sure to check out the amenities and free services at the Drury. To insure availability during the pre-Mardi Gras festivities, secure reservations by January 15th--or sooner! Rooms are limited! See more details in the brochure.
Judith Kullas Shine
President |
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Professional Development Opportunities |
It's Fall!! And that means it's time to take advantage of one or more of the many professional growth opportunities across the country. This link includes state, national and international professional development opportunities. New events are added several times a month. If you represent an organization with PDOs of interest to school social workers, please contact ACSSW with details. All submissions will be considered for posting based upon relevance, timing, and interest level.
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Recommended Read for November | |
School Social Work: An Evidence-Informed Framework for Practice
by M. Kelly, J. Raines, S. Stone & A. Frey
Reviews at Oxford University Press
"This text will become an instant classic for its scholarship and readability. Each chapter is filled with information for improving school social work practice using the available research evidence at every level of intervention. In this extraordinarily engaging practice book, Kelly and colleagues show practitioners the process for asking important questions about what constitutes effective school social work practice and provide specific strategies for practitioners to use when improving their practices." -Cynthia Franklin, PhD, Professor and Stiernberg/Spencer Family Professor in Mental Health, University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work
"School Social Work is a timely and valuable resource for school social work students and practitioners. The authors of this book draw upon their extensive experience as school social work practitioners, educators, and scholars to provide practitioners and students with a process for bridging the gap between research and practice. Their chapter on iatrogenic effects is notable since this topic is rarely addressed in school social work practice texts." -David R. Dupper, PhD, Associate Professor of Social Work, University of Tennessee
Oxford Univ. Press-SSW/Kelly Better World Books-SSW/Kelly |
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Practice Points | |
School Social Work Skillset and PBIS: A Good Match
"Efforts to train school personnel in PBIS begin with schoolwide PBIS (SWPBS) (for more information, go to http://www.pbis.org/). Although a recent national survey indicated that school social workers completing the survey spent a limited amount of time involved in schoolwide interventions (Kelly et al., 2010), it is hoped that school social workers are taking advantage of this opportunity to be trained and involved in implementation of SWPBS1 which provides the foundation for secondary and tertiary interventions. This column does not address the primary prevention (PBIS) or tier 1 RtI in the continuum of services, but, rather, the secondary prevention PBIS/tier 2 RtI and the tertiary prevention PBIS/tier 3 RtI." Click here for complete article.
Beautiful Brains
"Freud saw adolescence as an expression of torturous psychosexual conflict; Erik Erikson, as the most tumultuous of life's several identity crises. Adolescence: always a problem.
Such thinking carried into the late 20th century, when researchers developed brain-imaging technology that enabled them to see the teen brain in enough detail to track both its physical development and its patterns of activity. These imaging tools offered a new way to ask the same question-What's wrong with these kids?-and revealed an answer that surprised almost everyone. Our brains, it turned out, take much longer to develop than we had thought. This revelation suggested both a simplistic, unflattering explanation for teens' maddening behavior-and a more complex, affirmative explanation as well." Read more at National Geographic.
Many Teens Endure Sexual Harassment, Study Finds
As students navigate changing sexual and social norms in middle and high school, many of them confuse the line between joking and sexual harassment, according to a new report.
Based on the first nationally representative survey in a decade of students in grades 7-12, the study, which was set for release this week by the American Association of University Women, found that 48 percent of nearly 2,000 students surveyed had experienced verbal, physical, or online sexual harassment at school during the 2010-11 school year.
The students' reports reveal constantly shifting school environments-mostly unseen by the adults on campus-in which students use everything from gossip and teasing to groping or more severe physical attacks to enforce gender stereotypes, bully, and retaliate. Nearly a third of victims become harassers themselves. Complete article here. Download study. |
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Leadership News | |
"Our desire in preparing this Handbook was to bring together the best minds on the various topics related to family and community engagement and produce a guidebook that is solid in its research footings, practical in its presentation, and useful to people in the field. To touch hearts as well as minds, we have sprinkled throughout the book several fictional vignettes to remind us of the everyday lives of parents, teachers, and the children they hold in their care.
This Handbook is intended to provide educators, community leaders, and parents with a succinct survey of the best research and practice accumulated over the years. More important, the Handbook gives us a guide-a lean and lucid roadmap with which we can travel to a new plain in our quest for each and every student's academic, personal, social, and emotional development. We offer the Handbook as a skeleton on which the body of good work in the field can be built. That work is extensive, and the people engaged in it are a special breed, firm in their commitment to enhancing the opportunities for our youth and wise in their understanding that schools cannot provide that opportunity alone." Download Handbook, including suggested practices. |
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Research Highlights | |
"Sexual harassment has long been an unfortunate part of the climate in middle and high schools in the United States. Sexual harassment, often considered a kind of bullying, by de1nition involves sex and gender and therefore warrants separate attention. The legal definition of sexual harassment also differentiates it from bullying.
Based on a nationally representative survey of 1,965 students in grades 7-12 conducted in May and June 2011, Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School provides fresh evidence about students' experiences with sexual harassment, including being harassed, harassing someone else, or witnessing harassment. 0e survey asked students to share their reactions to their experience with sexual harassment and its impact on them. It also asked them about their ideas for how schools can respond to and prevent sexual harassment." Download Crossing the Line.
A Broader and Bolder Approach Uses Education to Break the Cycle of Poverty
Making bold assertions that all children can achieve while doing nothing to address the challenges they face is neither fair nor sound public policy.
Recognizing that poverty has a profound influence on academic outcomes is not a new idea. In fact, a large body of research over several decades has shown that poor children face enormous education challenges specifically related to poverty (Coleman et al., 1966; Rothstein, 2004). However, recently it's become fashionable for policy makers and reformers to criticize anyone who points to poverty as an obstacle to learning and higher achievement. Loudly proclaiming "no excuses," these reformers claim that large numbers of ineffective classroom teachers, not poverty, are the real obstacles to improving academic outcomes for poor children. While it is absolutely the case that poor children need dedicated, passionate, and effective teachers and principals to be successful, there is no evidence that even the best schools can overcome the effects of poverty on their own. However, a growing number of "reformers" steadfastly make this assertion, and these individuals have enormous influence over education policy. Complete Kappan article here. Kappan PDF here. |
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In the News | |
White and Mixed-Race Youths Rank High in Alcohol, Substance Abuse
The first-ever survey of adolescent alcohol and drug abuse to recognize youths of mixed race or ethnicity has found that such kids hover closest to white adolescents in the rate at which they suffer substance abuse disorders. That is not reassuring, because white adolescents are among the most likely ethnic and racial groups to have substance-use disorders. Of all ethnic groups, Native Americans were found to suffer the highest rates of drug and alcohol abuse and dependence -- about 15% in a given year. African American adolescents were among the least likely to abuse or be dependent on drugs or alcohol: on a yearly basis, roughly 5% of black teens fit the criteria for substance-use disorder - -almost as low a rate as prevails among adolescents of Asian or Pacific Islander ethnicity (3.5%). Latino youths -- the fastest-growing ethnic group in this age cohort -- fell below white and multi-ethnic adolescents in their rate of substance-use disorders, but not by much: 7.7% qualified as having dangerously abused or been dependent on drugs or alcohol in the past year. The survey was published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Full article.
Possible Genetic Link to Autism Identified
A gene variation associated with an increased risk of autism in boys has been identified by scientists. The results showed a link between a variation in the gene for transducin beta-like 1X-linked (TBL1X) and an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in boys. TBL1X is part of the Wnt-signaling pathway involved in the system that controls embryonic neurological development and the maintenance of brain function in adults. The study is published in the Nov. 3 online edition of the journal Molecular Autism. Read more.
Good Luck, Bad Luck
Superstitions have long been a part of growing up. Some kids (and adults too) may believe a full moon or the number 13 is a sign of misfortune, or that a blanket or teddy bear is a good luck charm. There are also those who rely on rituals such as knocking on wood to somehow influence the outcome of events. "Superstitions give us a sense of certainty," said Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist and representative of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. They also help kids handle anxiety and provide a sense of control, he added, and are especially common with 8- to 12-year-olds. Parents shouldn't freak out if their child adopts a certain routine for luck, or make wishes on a star. Parents can even join in when convenient - starting a bedtime ritual to ward off the night, for instance. Still, there are red flags to look out for. "If the ritual is getting in the way of the child's functioning, it becomes a problem," Brody said. "Some kids actually become totally immobilized." Rituals that cause alarming behavior, such as refusing to eat or leave the house, also are signs of bigger issues, Brody said, and professional help will be warranted. Continue.
Childhood Physical Abuse Linked to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Study Suggests
Childhood physical abuse is associated with significantly elevated rates of functional somatic syndromes such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and multiple chemical sensitivities among women, according to new findings by University of Toronto researchers. The research [was] published in [the May 2011] issue of the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.
"Women who reported they had been physically abused as children have twice the odds of chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivities, and 65 per cent higher odds of fibromyalgia" says lead investigator Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, who holds the Sandra Rotman Chair at U of T's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Department of Family and Community Medicine. "These findings persisted even after controlling for potentially confounding factors such as other adverse childhood experiences, age, race, mental health and adult socioeconomic status." The study examined statistics from a regional subsample of the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey involving 7,342 women, 10 per cent of whom reported being physically abused as children. A minority of women reported they had been diagnosed by a health professional with chronic fatigue syndrome (1.3%), fibromyalgia (2.5%), or multiple chemical sensitivities (2.7%). Read more here. |
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Research Survey Request for Assistance | |
Bibliotherapy & School Social Workers
I am a doctoral student at Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science, River Forest, Illinois. I am seeking school social workers to complete an online survey about bibliotherapy for use towards research for a doctoral dissertation. For the purposes of this research bibliotherapy is defined as the use of books or other reading materials (poetry, magazines, comic books, etc) to assist with the counseling process. Participation is voluntary, confidential and anonymous. Completion of the survey should take approximately 30 minutes and can be done from any computer with internet access. If you are an interested social worker, or know of a school social worker who would be interested, the survey link is below. For more information, contact: Elizabeth Garcia, Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Dominican University. Thank you in advance for your participation. Bibliotherapy Survey Link
Survey on Substance Abuse Prevention and Collaboration Seeks Participants
The Partnership at Drugfree.org is conducting a survey to increase understanding of the best way to develop collaborations between law enforcement, substance abuse prevention agencies, and educators to prevent teens and young adults from engaging in substance abuse. Results will inform the development of a substance abuse collaboration training manual that will be free and available to participants and interested communities. The survey is funded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Take the survey online. |
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Grants & Funding | | ING Unsung Heroes Award
ING Unsung Heroes began in 1995as a way for ING to demonstrate its commitment to the education community. Grants are given to K-12 educators utilizing new teaching methods and techniques that improve learning. Each year, educators submit applications for an ING Unsung Heroes grant by describing projects they have initiated or would like to pursue. Each project is judged on its:
innovative method, creativity, and ability to positively influence the students. All K-12 education professionals, whether or not they are clients of ING, are eligible. Specifically, these individuals must be: (1) Employed by an accredited K-12 public or private school located in the United States, or (2) Full-time educators, teachers, principals, paraprofessionals, orclassified staff with effective projects that improve student learning. Deadline: April 30, 2012. Details here.
Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Invites Applications for Dissertation Fellowships in Education
The fellowships are intended to support doctoral students for work done after the successful defense of their dissertations. Although applicants must be candidates for a doctoral degree at a graduate school in the United States, they need not be U.S. citizens. Applications are encouraged from a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to education, sociology, economics, psychology, statistics, and psychometrics.
The fellowship is a one-time award of up to $25,000, which may be used for a period of not less than nine months and up to eighteen months. Four fellowships will be awarded. Complete program information and the application form are available at the Cooke Foundation Web site. Deadline: February 3, 2012. Link to complete RFP.
Libri Foundation: Books for Children
TheLibri Foundation Books for Children Grants donate new, quality, hardcover children's books for small, rural, public libraries across the country. Maximum award: varies. Eligibility: Libraries should be in a rural area, have a limited operating budget, and an active children's department. The average total operating budget of a Books for Children grant recipient must be less than $40,000. Deadline: January 23, 2012. Application Guidelines.
NEA Myra Sadker Student and Teacher Awards
The Myra Sadker Foundation supports educational equity efforts for students and teachers to advance social justice. Myra Sadker was a pioneer in creating fair classrooms for all students. These awards build upon her work. Teacher Awards fund a lesson, unit, or project that promotes fairness and human dignity. Student Awards fund projects or activities proposed by students of any age that promote the goals of the Myra Sadker Foundation. Dissertation Awards are designed to financially support doctoral level dissertations that explore or promote educational equity. Deadline: December 1, 2011. More. Sadker Foundation Website. |
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ACSSW Activities | |
ACSSW's present activities include:
- increasing research projects and their application within the school environment;
- developing a national school social work role paper;
- establishing a National Center for School Social Work Practice, Leadership and Research, a long-term goal,
- hosting the first Louisiana State-wide School Social Work Conference, January 30-31, 2012, in New Orleans, LA, and
- developing the 3rd National School Social Work Research Summit to be held June 24-26, 2012, in Bloomingdale, IL (a Chicago suburb) at the Hilton Chicago/Indian Lakes Resort.
If you have interest in participating in any of these activities, contact Judie Shine. ACSSW strives to be inclusive and transparent in all of its activities and welcomes, whether lengthy or short, the participation of its members. |
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