Field Student Highlights

2020-2021 Academic Year
Jenna Grannes, BSW Student - Hermantown Middle School

What do you like most about your placement?
I love being in the school setting and having the opportunity to work with kids all the way from kindergarten to 12th grade every day. I get a great mix of one on one time with kids, interacting with parents and teachers, working with social skills groups, and learning how to conduct special education evaluations and all of the moving parts that are involved. I have been extremely lucky to be so involved and included throughout my internship.

How are you able to support students at your placement?
At my placement, I have students on my caseload who I meet with individually for weekly check-ins, as well as students who have fallen behind in school and need help getting back on track. We lead an elementary social skills group that meets every Thursday morning, as well as a middle school girls group that meets bi-weekly. Throughout the holiday season, we worked a lot around supporting our low-income families in the district by providing Thanksgiving meal kits to roughly 40 families and connecting about 45 families with sponsors who acted as "Secret Santas" buying gifts for the families in need. We also host a free dental clinic that is ongoing throughout the year for those students who may not have dental insurance.

How has Covid impacted how you do your field placement?
Thankfully, I have been able to work in-person at Hermantown throughout most of my placement, aside from about a month-long stretch around the holidays when the students went to distance learning. It's hard to know exactly how covid has affected my field placement since I have only been here throughout covid pandemic times. I will say that I saw a very obvious downward shift in my students' mental health when they returned from distance learning. Many of these students receive special education services and for them, having to learn and do school while isolated at home, often without much support was very difficult. I can see how covid has impacted the students whom I work with more so than the placement I am in. Misha has done an incredible job at including me in everything and giving me tasks to complete so I always have something to do making it feel as normal as possible.

Please share how your field supervisor has been able to provide good support in this difficult year.
Misha Alaspa has been the most amazing supervisor I could have ever asked for! She is the most compassionate and understanding individual and the only social worker in the entire Hermantown school system! She does it all. She is incredible with her students and has perfectly modeled the social work values as they come to life in practice. It seems that everyday Misha has a full schedule, yet always finds time to meet with multiple unexpected students whether they are in crisis or just stopping in to say hi, and still manages answer all of my many questions with a smile on her face the entire time. Misha has taught me so much in leading by example with how she interacts with students and also in giving me first-hand experience and trusting me to work independently with kids. Misha has always been so supportive and has taught me more than I could have ever imagined my field placement would. She truly has gone above and beyond in teaching me and supporting my future career goals. I will be forever grateful for my placement at Hermantown and the opportunity to learn from Misha.

2020-2021 Academic Year
Simone Anzion, MSW Field Student - The Hills Youth and Family Services

Tell us about a "typical" day in your placement.
I did my field placement at Woodland Hills. A typical day in my placement can look very different depending on the day of the week. I am usually working with a group of teenage boys, going through their daily structure with them (including playing a lot of basketball), working through emotional regulation and group dynamics. I work with my unit manager and we spend time preparing clients for conversations with their parole officers, social workers, and conflict within the group. I spend time talking with my team, parents and/or guardians, social workers and case managers about individual clients. Sydney Bartz and I also co-facilitated a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy group every week with a group of teenage girls.

What do you like most about your placement?
I have worked with some of the same youth for months now and it has been really cool to see how much those relationships have changed over time, even with some of the most initially challenging-seeming of kids. Having moments where meaningful conversations can take place or just laughing over something silly absolutely makes my day.I have really enjoyed the people I work with. The different perspectives and experiences they often come into youth work with that are so different from my own but carry so much wisdom, the clinical team who I have learned so much from and who have invested their time teaching and supporting me, and the people I see on my day to day who help me find clarity in a situation or just make me laugh in a tough moment.

What have been the biggest challenges this year?
Working within structures that I disagree with or feel morally conflicted about. It is super difficult for me to watch a client be unsuccessfully discharged and calling into question what went wrong or what we could have done better. Seeing how difficult this work can be for staff and the general scarcity of resources in the program.

What have been your greatest successes this year?
I have been steadily working on a partnership with Outward Bound, with hope to do a 7 day canoe trip in the Boundary Waters with a group of the same boys who I have been working with for the past 7 months. It has been really rewarding to watch this partnership take shape. Reflecting on my own practice, it is rewarding to see areas of my internship I used to be nervous about that I have grown significantly more confident in, such as being more comfortable within conflict, advocating for clients needs inside and outside of the program, separating behaviors from a person, and beginning each day on a new page.

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