艾可直播

You鈥檝e been teaching at the 艾可直播 College School of Social Work since 1999. What鈥檚 kept you at BCSSW for the past 24 years?聽

I think the excitement of helping to train our future social workers, watching the field evolve, and then contributing to our program evolving and changing and improving every year.聽

How, in your view, has the School evolved since you joined the faculty?

There isn鈥檛 much left of the original program from when I started, so almost every course has changed. It used to be much more of a generalist program. Now there are specific fields of practice that students can choose to really hone their skills with the population that they are excited about working with. The rigor and expectations in terms of assignments, class participation, and investment from the teachers as well as from the students have all increased over time. So I think the social workers graduating from our program now are much better equipped to deal with the problems of our current times than our students would have been if we hadn鈥檛 evolved.聽聽

Associate Dean Tom Walsh, who directs the MSW program, is very invested in the School being cutting edge鈥攚e have such a deep bench of clinical electives. He encourages part-time 艾可直播and full-time 艾可直播to create syllabi for the up-and-coming evidence-based practices that are new in the field. We are often the first graduate school鈥攐r the only one鈥攖o offer clinical electives in those particular modalities. And so it has really set us apart, especially in the 艾可直播 area, from the other schools.聽

You鈥檝e routinely taught six鈥攐r even seven鈥攃ourses a year. What will you miss most about teaching?

Being in the classroom with students. It鈥檚 a job that has been a privilege from the beginning. Each week I think about what I鈥檓 responsible to teach and what will be helpful to students, and then they ask me questions that are thoughtful and deep, deepening my learning. Students sometimes bring in information and knowledge that I don鈥檛 have. And so I learn about new things from them. It鈥檚 an exciting hour and 50 minutes for me every week to learn from our students and to watch them transform over the course of a semester. The place where they start is not the place where they end by the end of the semester. And it鈥檚 just thrilling, really, to be on that journey with them.

What鈥檚 been your favorite course to teach鈥攁nd why?

My favorite course is Solution-Focused Therapy because that鈥檚 the kind of therapy I practice. In the course, we are done with theory by maybe the third or the fourth week of the semester and the rest of the semester is practice. And it鈥檚 so exciting to watch students try on new ways of thinking and to struggle with it and to experience it and to have aha moments where they realize, 鈥淥h, I鈥檝e never thought about it that way before. Do I like that? Do I not like that? Let me think about that.鈥� So there鈥檚 time in that class and space for a lot of reflection and journeying for the students.聽

That鈥檚 my class where students probably ask the most evocative questions where they鈥檙e like, 鈥淲ell, what would you do with a client with this problem?鈥� And I have to really pause and think, from a solution-focused perspective, because they're usually asking about a very difficult situation. They鈥檙e not asking about the easy ones. And so I have to really pause because I know that they are probably approaching it from a problem-focused perspective because most people would, and to approach it from a solution-focused perspective takes some thinking because it鈥檚 not our natural way in the mental health world to formulate something like that. I get excited by that kind of challenging question because then I鈥檓 really having to work hard. And everybody is benefiting from learning a new way to think about someone鈥檚 life and what they want out of their life.

You鈥檝e integrated LGBTQ issues into the BCSSW curriculum. You鈥檝e taught several generations of students how to incorporate solution-focused therapy into their practice. And you鈥檝e been praised by alumni for helping to shape their philosophies as social workers. When you reflect on all your accomplishments at BC, what are you most proud of?

I have two answers to that. One is that I feel most grateful for the opportunity to have grown so much as a social worker through being on the 艾可直播at the School. I am not the social worker I was when I arrived in 1999. I am a much better social worker. I have learned techniques because I had to teach them, and then I鈥檝e incorporated them into my practice and it has helped the clients that I work with. And so I feel very grateful because I never would have discovered those techniques had I not been required to teach them. And that dovetails back to the fact that we keep evolving our curriculum. We keep changing it every year to update it. And so you鈥檙e learning new things all the time.聽

The other thing that I love is watching students graduate from our program and go on to become these incredible social workers. It鈥檚 such a thrill to watch all the people who graduated from our program win awards and go on to make such amazing contributions to our field, to the world. That鈥檚 so exciting to me, to stay in touch with them, to follow them, to learn from them as they grow beyond what I know about lots of things. I鈥檓 excited when we invite them back and they share with us this wisdom that they have accumulated over their time since they were with us. It feels powerful to know we were the beginning of that journey, we were the launch, and then they went on to expand and grow in these really meaningful ways.

You said that you鈥檙e a much better social worker now than you were when you joined the faculty. What have you learned from your peers at BCSSW that you have incorporated into your own private practice聽as a solution-focused therapist?聽

I think learning internal family systems from Robin Warsh and learning about neuroscience from Jessica Black. When Jessica Black arrived, she transformed our program. I was just soaking up all the neuroscience I could, and I ended up completely incorporating that into the social worker that I am. And I talk about it with all my clients.聽

Robin Warsh is a master clinician. She has so generously shared her knowledge of internal family systems therapy, created an elective focused on the model, and made it accessible for people to understand and integrate into their own practice even if they don鈥檛 do a deep dive into the intensive training of it.聽

Although you plan to continue running your private practice, your retirement from BCSSW will free up a considerable amount of time. How will you spend it?

I have a new grandson, so I鈥檓 going to do some daycare. I plan to read books for pleasure, which I haven鈥檛 done in a long time. I鈥檇 also like to volunteer as a mentor for women who are in prison. And I鈥檓 going to learn Spanish. My daughter is raising our grandson bilingual and bicultural because she is, and so I would also like to be able to talk to him in Spanish. I think as social workers, we should know Spanish. It鈥檚 been the thing I haven鈥檛 had time to do that I鈥檓 looking forward to doing.

What advice do you have for students who are training to become clinical social workers?

I say this all the time to them: It is a journey and you鈥檙e never done learning. You鈥檙e going to continue to change as a social worker and evolve. Social work is really the most exciting, diverse profession I鈥檝e ever known about. And you can do so many different things as a social worker. There is an unlimited set of ways to apply our skill set and our perspective to anything. And so I would say expand your thinking. Think about the places and spaces where you can have influence and make that space a better place for the people who are in it.

Is there anything else you would like to add?聽

Something I鈥檝e been thinking a lot about is how much I鈥檓 going to miss my colleagues. We have an incredible staff and 艾可直播and our staff has been there for a long time. We have all been together for almost 30 years. The key staff in field education, in student services, in career services, Dean Walsh running the MSW program鈥攚e have all been there together for almost 30 years and it is such a privilege to work with them every day. They have the highest integrity and commitment to the students and to our program that I鈥檝e ever experienced. And so I think I will miss the 艾可直播and the staff deeply and miss working with them and learning from them.