The Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP) was founded by Dr. Larry Davis, then dean of the school of social work at Pitt, in 2002. Social work faculty (now a Vice Provost) and Homewood native Dr. John Wallace created the Homewood Children’s Village (HCV), modeled on Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, in 2008. Part of Pitt’s strategic plan includes “collaborating with communities, near and far, to improve the outcomes and opportunities for their residents.” Pitt’s school of social work interns make a huge contribution to this goal each year, as they work directly with young school students in the Homewood community that is literally on the University’s doorstep.
Since 2011, the CRSP Fellowship has provided over 40 interns to support dozens of local children in Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS). Eligible Master of Social Work (MSW) students apply to the Fellowship via the CRSP website throughout the spring and summer and are selected based on interviews with HCV staff. They work 10 – 20 hours per week directly in the schools with an assigned caseload of children who are referred to HCV by the teachers and administrators in Pittsburgh schools. As one intern summarized their role: “We are there to be advocates for the school students.”
Over the years, HCV directors and field supervisors have shared that the help provided by SSW interns is “invaluable” and that they wish they “could have 20 interns each year, not 8.” HCV Field supervisor Kiva Fisher Green shared that: “Because the interns are there over two semesters, they can build rapport and trust with specific children in their caseload, which is key to being able to help them manage the issues they struggle with.”
An intern described her experience: “Many of the issues that students shared with me were outside issues being brought into the school and affecting their performance. Things like hunger, gun violence, abuse and poverty.” Another observed: “Teachers would express frustration with how children were acting in class. I had to explain that many behaviors were trauma manifesting itself. I believe more attention to mental health for students and teachers in the PPS system would be beneficial.”
In data gathered for their presentation from the PA department of education, Pitt interns Jasmine Beckwith, Vindya Reedy, Christin Thorpe and Lesley McCaskey noted that in the school they worked in, 74% of the children are economically disadvantaged, 18% are designated special education, and 92% are black. Challenges these students face include lack of nutrition, academic support, and parental encouragement in addition to poverty, domestic violence and high crime in their neighborhood.
Another CRSP-HCV intern put it like this: “This experience has changed my perception of hardship. I grew up relatively poor with a complicated home life compared to my peers. Hearing my [PPS] students talk about their lives made me open my eyes to how privileged I had been.”
She continued: “How can any child be expected to ace an exam, or even have the energy to make it to class, when they had to watch their infant sibling all night so their parent could pick up an extra shift or when their cousin was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized the night before?”
The Fellows work with their HCV supervisors, who encourage and support their efforts to meet with students individually. However, there are times when the supervisor will not be available, and the CRSP-HCV Fellows must figure it out on their own. “Many teaching positions are unfilled, classes have to be moved to other rooms, students who should have been on my caseload had moved out of the district or been sent to intermediate schools.” Another added: “To do this work takes a lot of self-sufficiency. There were resources available but with urban schooling, no matter how unprepared you feel -- the best practice is to dive in.”
One intern wrote: “I learned the value of forming relationships with everyone in your setting; my most helpful relationship was with the school custodian, who helped me navigate an unfamiliar building, let me into rooms so I could meet with students in private, and gave me tips on how to stand up for myself as a student intern.”
Institutional barriers notwithstanding, the work can be incredibly rewarding; as one intern put it: “Meeting with the children was the highlight of my week.” She described doing an activity with a student that was going really well, when he suddenly became upset and agitated, and stood up and began walking away. Shocked and not sure what was happening, she followed him and asked him what was wrong. He was unable to tell her what was wrong and shut down almost completely.
At a loss, the intern pulled out some crayons and began coloring, and invited the student to join her, hoping it would help to calm him down. He did calm down, but she noted “but it was clear he didn’t want to talk.” At the end of their session, she walked him back to his classroom and at the door he asked if he could give her a hug. She wrote: “I accepted and when he gave me the hug, he told me he was sorry for how he was acting. This apology was something I never expected. I think he was able to realize I was there to help him and at later sessions we talked about appropriate ways to express himself moving forward.”
Another intern wrote: “Watching my students use the skills we talked about during our sessions was so fulfilling. Watching them progress in areas we worked on was so rewarding. Even something as simple as listening to their teacher and completing their work was a huge accomplishment.”
Ms. Fisher-Green noted that the qualities most important to selecting interns include not necessarily their experience but is more about energy, attitude and enthusiasm for the work. She noted that “Every year in September, the Fellows start off the semester feeling unsure, perhaps nervous and wondering if they are really able to make a difference in students’ lives. By April, the difficulty is more that they are so bonded with their students that they find it hard to leave.”
Pittsburgh remains one of the most racially segregated cities in the nation, and historically schools at which the CRSP Fellows work within the structure of HCV are in majority black neighborhoods where decades of systemic racism in employment, education, home-ownership, law enforcement, health and mental health services have negatively affected multiple generations of residents.
What could be done to support these children more? As one intern put it, and others shared similar thoughts: “Replace zero tolerance policies with a more equitable set of discipline policies, such as Restorative Justice. It was astonishing to me that 3 unexcused absences in a school year can lead to possible arrest of the students, Child Protective Services intervention, and referral to court system. I believe a better solution to truancy would be to focus less on punishing students and focus more on understanding the barriers these students face in attending school.”
Of course, the pandemic year of 2020-2021, provided an additional challenge to the CRSP-HCV interns, because schools were not open and this forced them to be creative in reaching out to the children they wanted to serve. However, it also provided an opportunity for the interns to work more holistically with the families of their clients, in the process they developed some very deep understanding of the issues:
“The children and families I worked with were some of the most hardworking and resourceful individuals I have ever met. My clients were making things work in impossible circumstances; health and mental issues, domestic violence, working nights, working long and unpredictable shifts PLUS homeschooling their children. My only wish for them is that they have more support in the form of childcare, healthcare, and quite frankly, monetary aid. In our neoliberal ethic, giving money with no strings attached is frowned upon, but I believe a universal basic income (in addition to free child-care and Medicare for all) would go a long way to ensuring that families like the ones I worked with over the past nine months would have what they needed to not only survive, but to thrive.”
The value of the work performed in Pittsburgh Public Schools through the Homewood Children’s Village and CRSP Fellowship may be hard to quantify. As former Interim CRSP director, Just Discipline Project director and school of social work professor Dr. James Huguley observed: “This is one day at a time type of work. You have to find your victories and ways of self-care, but you’re probably making more of a difference than you can see in the immediate.”
Thanks to several cohorts of CRSP Fellows whose thoughts and words contributed to this story:
Amanda Dugan
Tyree Ford
Grace Geisler
Guilise Gondre
Giovanna Guarnieri
Liz Hammond
Cody Harmon
Megan Hough
Michael Jackson
Philip Lawson
Samuel Lofquist
Malika Mason
Lesley McCaskey
Emily Payne
Rachel Popcak
Vindya Reedy
Anna-Graciela Samayoa
Anna Shaw
Rebecca Sherrill
Kiersten Snyder
Tailer Speight
Chelsie Spinner
Christin Thorpe