more interviews

This past Tuesday afternoon I had my interview at the Plymouth Youth Center School (PYC) in North Minneapolis. It was a quick interview, only about 15 minutes, as they seemed to be working in a pretty hectic and quick-paced environment. PYC, as I mentioned before, is an alternative high school for students that haven't been doing well in the regular high school environment for one reason or another, or that might have been expelled from their previous high schools. It is a tough group of kids to work with, as they are facing a variety of challenges. The school has a team of 3 full-time social workers, which is pretty amazing. They are part of the health & wellness team, which includes an on-site clinic. Their philosophy is to use a holistic approach with the students, which includes everything from mind/body wellness education to taking them on field trips and to do volunteer work.

The main deterrent for me from PYC is also the one thing that draws me to it, which is the age of the students. I haven't had very much experience working with high schoolers. One the one hand, I just feel that I naturally work better with younger kids and I should work on enhancing my strengths. On the other hand, I feel like it would be a really good idea to widen my level of experience. I just don't know.

Wednesday morning I had an interview at Park View Montessori (K-6 school) in Minneapolis's Bryn Mawr neighborhood, which is on the south side, directly west of Downtown. It is a cute neighborhood, with all three schools connected to one another: Park View, Bryn Mawr Elementary and Anwatin Junior High. The social worker at Park View, Joey, was really great. She seemed very enthused about my experience working in schools and with kids. It sounds like I'd have a lot of options as to what I'd get to do there. Her current two interns facilitate their own groups. I could also learn about the assessment process and I would get my own small caseload of kids. They also do home visits, which would be a pretty neat experience. Although the school is not in North Minneapolis, they get a lot of students bused over from there. For those not familiar with the Twin Cities, North Minneapolis is considered to be the roughest place to live. There is a lot of crime, drugs, gang violence, etc. Many of the students coming from there live in alternative family situations or shelters, many of their families do not have reliable vehicles or phone numbers. For this reason, it's hard to get parents to show up at the school because it is too difficult for them to get there or because it isn't possible to even get a hold of them by phone. Which is where home visits come in, and Joey said that a good deal of the families are very receptive to this.

In conclusion, I am still leaning towards Wellstone as my first choice with Park View as possibly number two. I still have one more interview, this upcoming Tuesday, at Ramsey Magnet in Minneapolis. I'll keep you all posted!