Wellstone

If you haven't read my previous two posts ("I'm back!" and "School days"), scroll on down and read those first!

As everyone knows by now, my field placement for the year is at Wellstone Elementary School in downtown St. Paul. I'm working with the school social worker, Julianne. I started on August 31st, with the first staff meeting and then had my first official day as an intern on Wednesday, September 9th. As the year proceeds, I'll speak more on my official duties. For now I'll just go over the basics.

First of all, Wellstone is a K-6 magnet school. The magnet is "basic skills", so the focus is on math and reading proficiency. There are about 650 students. About 40% are African American and African (mostly Somali), 40% Latino, 15% Asian and 5% Caucasian and other. One of the reasons we have so many Latino students is that we have dual immersion classrooms at every grade level, where the primary instruction is in Spanish. Another important thing to note is that about 90% of our students are in the free and reduced lunch program. So the poverty level is pretty high among the student population. We have a high number of kids in Special Ed and with IEPs (Individualized Education Program). The kids that we work with are ones with social work services on their IEPs.

Some of the things that I will be doing this year are working with groups. So far Julianne and I have had our first 5th grade boys group and 6th grade girls group. I'll also be helping with the dog therapy program (more on that another time). I'll be learning how to do IEPs, functional-behavioral assessments, etc. I'm also going to get a handful of students that I'll eventually be doing individual work with. For now I'm working with Julianne, learning how she does things and learning about the students and the school. I have my own office space as of last week, so I've been working on getting my materials together and getting settled in. I'm there two and a half days a week: all day Monday and Wednesday and Friday in the morning.

I think it should be an amazing learning experience!