Video Profile of a School Social Worker
Marie Armantrout is a school social worker for Seminole County Public Schools. Her career and philosophy were documented in a short video by For Your Health, a subsidiary of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.
Transcription:
Marie: I am a school social worker and I work in Seminole County Public Schools, and I'm on a special team in the county called the Behavior Support Team. Part of what I do is go around to all 12 middle schools and I go into social personal classes, which are a piece of the emotional and behavioral disability program, and I help teach those classes with the teachers.
Narrator: These students are not Marie Armantrout's regular students. These kids are gifted kids who volunteered to show us how a session with a school social worker might go. These students make it look easy, but working with truly emotionally disabled students can make for some tough days.
Marie: I think you have to remind yourself of where these kids are coming from, and not take it personally. And you really have to be committed to "Every day is a new day. Every day is a fresh start for these kids."
Narrator: After completing her Master's in Social Work at the University of Central Florida, Armantrout seized upon a job opening within Seminole County schools. The students she works with lack social skills. They have poor judgement and often come from difficult backgrounds. For those kids, school social workers play a critical role.
Marie: Nationwide, they have the worst outcomes [when compared to] any other students that are any other disability or exceptional ed category: speech/language impaired, specific learning disability, educable mentally disabled. They have the worst outcomes. They have the worst graduation rates, they have the highest incarceration rates; so when you don't have programs to support these kids, who usually have social skill deficits, they just don't know how to relate socially with people in a pro-social way, in a constructive way. You're having kids who are going to turn into dropouts, and their options dwindle. And because they don't have those social skills, they don't know how to build a positive support system around them. So their options are dwindling and they end up in jail, or, you know, worse.
Narrator: Seminole County would actually like to expand its use of social workers so they would have more social workers visiting fewer schools, but that of course is dependent on funding.
Now three years into the program, Armantrout is able to see changes in some of the students.
Marie: Some of our kids are making better decisions, I would say. They're actually able to sit down and reflect on what they've done and how to change what they're doing. If we had the funding, I wish that every school could have a social worker that does what I do in that school, that could spend five days a week in that school, being that positive relationship, and meeting with these kids.