Back to (social) work. A series with Melanie Wilson.
Posted March 13, 2023, by Mindi Wisman
An East County Citizens’ Alliance volunteer works with a student
Melanie Wilson is the former Youth Catalytics research director. She lives in Washington State. This is the first in a series of posts on the evolution of a hybrid mentoring/tutoring program her nonprofit, East County Citizens’ Alliance, developed in partnership with a local school system. Updates will appear every month or two.
Back to school
I’ve been schooled. After so many years of supporting the front lines, I’m on them myself. And I need help in the most basic of ways. Believe me, the irony isn’t lost on me.
The scenario will be familiar to almost any youthworker. I’m sitting across from a teenage girl. She’s streetwise, wary, theatrically bored, but also a little soft and searching around the edges.
I find myself here because I’m a mentor to so-called middle of the road kids in a new program at my local high school. I feel some special obligation to prove my value, because the program is a project of a nonprofit that I myself started just a year ago. One of my new organization’s goals is to support schools trying to pull themselves out of the academic and social quagmire of the pandemic, and these middling students are front and center for us: they aren’t succeeding, but they’re not in acute trouble, either. They just need a little help and perhaps someone to talk to. Surely we, standard-issue members of the community who each happen to have a bit background with young people, can be of service. But can we, though? I’m not sure.
The truth is that the girl in front of me, speaking softly and without affect, is saying some alarming things. Her best friend has run away from home. Her parents have been out of her life for years. She lives with an aunt who doesn’t talk to her. She quit school earlier in the year, but she’s only 14 so she got pulled back in. She’s giving school one more chance, but isn’t hopeful. She hates the drama of school so she keeps her head down, but nevertheless people are always whispering about her. She feels like she’s surrounded by children, not people like her who had hard lives. She wishes she had some true friends. She wishes her family would at least talk to her sometimes.
She tells me her story willingly enough, but without real interest. Her eyes keep wandering around the room and we occasionally fall silent. Her investment with me is minimal; in some ways, I realize she’s barely here at all. Still, I realize this might be my only chance with her. She’s agreed to meet with me this one time, but it’s obvious she may not–and probably won’t–come again.
How can we help?
I don’t have to lean too hard on my social work background to know she’s in danger. It’s obvious to me that school is probably the only thing she’s got going for her–the only thing that can both protect her and promote her true interests. She doesn’t see it that way, though. Can I help her see it? Can I be around often enough, engage her thoroughly enough, to keep her connected? If not well-connected, then at least tenuously so–long enough to make some healthy friends, bond with a couple of teachers, find a couple of classes that remotely interest her?
Sitting with her, I doubt it. Our halting conversation finally winds down to nothing. She finishes her cup of hot chocolate, thoughtfully provided by our new program, and leaves. The next week, I come in to meet her but she’s absent. In two weeks’ time, I hear she’s unofficially quit school again. She’s on my mind, though. I wonder where she is and who she’s with. I obviously won’t be the one to pull her back from the brink. With luck and time, I hope someone will.
In the meantime, I ponder our school coordinator’s contention that this girl–and all the other troubled students we meet–are actually kids with middle-of-the-road problems. If this level of “at risk” is ordinary in public high schools, what counts as extraordinary? And how can a high school with four counselors for 1,000 students possibly manage? I don’t ask these questions rhetorically. I’m actually searching for answers. Perhaps there are many answers. If you have them, please offer them up. The time for them is now, when so many school districts like mine need to beg, borrow, steal, or build resources they don’t yet have for kids with problems that aren’t going to addressed any other way.
Mentoring and tutoring programs that attempt to provide new support to schools and students following the pandemic are surging. This is the first in a series that traces the evolution of one such startup program in Washington State.