Anyone who has worked at a public school is impacted in dozens of ways: many of the positive, some of them negative. When you are a social worker in an inner-city school, the impact is amplified. Social Workers are there, in the schools, working to identify the needs of individual students. Anything that interferes with their learning is open game. They work with students, school staff, service providers, and whenever possible, the parents.
In inner-city schools, the needs of the students can be voluminous, and the number of students requiring assistance just as large. This was the experience of Valerie Groth, founder of Ryan Banks Academy. She worked with many students in crisis, providing them with counseling services, often on her own, to help them deal with situations that ranged from abuse, neglect, violence, mental illness, to malnutrition and hunger.
Valerie often wondered what it would be like if you took urban students out of the circumstances that led to those situations. She thought about what an urban boarding school program might look like. And then came the formative moment that led her to move from thought to action. I hope you will be as inspired by this Advisor.TV Big Shoulders interview with Valerie Groth as I was.
To contact Valerie, email her at [email protected].
