field fair and orientation

This past Tuesday I attended the Field Fair and Orientation at the U of M's School of Social Work (SSW). The SSW is on the U's St. Paul Campus, along with the rest of the College of Education and Human Development. There's also a lot of agricultural stuff over there. It's rather isolated, right by the Minnesota State Fair grounds. It's a big change from the UW Campus.

The orientation consisted of a three-hour-long introduction to field placement, including a student panel and a field instructor panel. It wasn't particularly useful, but it was a nice way to meet a few fellow MSW students. Unfortunately many of the people that I met at the orientation will not actually be taking classes alongside me. The MSW degree is a 2-year program, consisting of a "foundational year" and then the second year which focuses more on specialization. Advanced standing students, such as myself, get to skip over the foundational year because it basically covers the same fundamentals that we learned when obtaining our BSWs. So when we take classes we are mixed in with other advanced standing students and other 2nd year students. Many of those beginning the program are in the full program.

Mira has told me that she thinks it must be hard to enter the program as an advanced standing student because the 2nd years have already been together for a year and all know each other, and have formed friendship groups, etc. For this reason, I tried to seek out some of the other advanced standing students during orientation. As luck would have it, I was sitting next to one. She was a friendly girl named Laura who had graduated in 2008 from the University of St. Thomas. Throughout the morning and afternoon I met a couple of others, so hopefully there will be a few friendly faces come fall.

The Field Fair was from 3-5:00, and is sort of like a job fair. Various agencies that take MSW interns set up booths and you can stop and talk with them, get information, set up interviews, etc. The way that placement works is you interview with as many agencies as you want (5-6 is the recommended number) and then rank order the ones that you liked. So if you interview somewhere and don't think it would be a good fit, you wouldn't even put it on the list because then you might end up getting placed there. After you turn in your ranking, the SSW gets lists from the agencies that rank orders the students that they interviewed. Comparing all the lists, the SSW attempts to make placements. Typically 70-80% of students get their first or second choice. There is also a very small portion that they are unable to place, so there is a second round of interviews in June for those students, as well as anyone admitted late to the school, etc.

The Field Fair was extremely chaotic and crowded. Three different colleges work cooperatively in this whole interview/placement process, in order to keep things fair and controlled. So the University of Minnesota, St. Thomas/St. Kate's and Augsburg College students all participate. The interviewing process begins on April 8th and runs for one month. Our placement preference forms are due on May 11th.

I was pretty efficient at the fair, as I did my homework ahead of time. The SSW's website has a list of all available agencies as well as a nearly 400 page web document that contains agency descriptions, describing the role of a social work intern, the agency's mission statement, etc. Knowing that I most likely want to do my placement at a school, I focused on those particular agencies and made a list of about 6-7. Luckily all but one of them was represented at the Field Fair, and I was able to set up interviews on-the-spot with three of them. These are all of the sites:

(1) W.I.S.E. Charter School/Learning for Leadership: W.I.S.E. (Carter G. Woodson School for Academic Excellence) is a K-7 school in North Minneapolis that uses the principles of Nguzo Saba, which are the seven African principles of Kwanzaa: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Its population is almost 100% African American.

The Learning for Leadership Charter School is a K-12 school in Northeast Minneapolis that features project-based learning and field trips. It is about 60% African American, 25% White and 8% Latino.

I am interviewing with the social worker that works at both the schools, so I would get to select which one I am more interested in.

(2) Plymouth Christian Youth Center School is a contract alternative high school with the Minneapolis Public Schools. It is arts & technology focused, and the demographics are mainly African American and Asian, with some Latino and "other" mixed in. It is not actually a Christian school, the name dates back many years to when the majority of funding apparently came from the Protestant Church.

(3) Wellstone Elementary School is part of the St. Paul Public Schools and is located right in downtown St. Paul. It is a K-6 magnet school. It was also named after Sheila and Senator Paul Wellstone.

(4) Murray Jr. High School is a 7th and 8th grade math and science magnet school in St. Paul, located near the University's St. Paul campus.

(5) Minneapolis Public Schools -- had to fill out an information sheet on my areas of interest and the intern manager will be matching me with places to interview at based on that. So I am still waiting to see on that one!

My first interview is this coming Monday, April 13th at the Learning for Leadership School. I will post about how that goes!