Jacob Campbell

Jacob Campbell

School social worker practicing with students with EBD, university adjunct faculty, PhD student, Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, father, husband, and active community member

Spring 2025 SOWK 587 Class 03 Weekly Email

Email sent on to SOWK 587

SOWK 587 Class Header

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. With the weather, we have decided to have class via Zoom this session. I’ll send out a separate email with the link to your Heritage Emails and post it on the class page. Sorry to take so long to send out the email and finalize the presentation this week. Just a reminder that even if I haven’t sent out an email with the course content I will always work to post the forum assignments first so they are there for you to work off of. My goal is always to do do it by the weekend before class starts. This week they were posted on MyHeritage by Monday late afternoon.

Unit Introduction and What You Will Learn

Week three for SOWK 587 is focused on exploring school climate and culture and understanding schools as organizations. Students will read about the professional standards and services social workers provide in schools and our essential practices. In the forums, they will consider practices for supporting student needs. This week is a synchronous week with in-person class on 02/08/25. The agenda for the in-person class session is as follows:

  • Understanding school climate and school culture
  • Exploring what the climate is in your schools
  • Multi-Tiered Systems of Support
  • Exploring interventions within MTSS
  • Diversity and inclusion within services

The Learning Objectives include:

  • Explain the difference between RTI, PBIS, MTSS
  • Be able to assess school climate
  • Identify potential interventions and what tier they are
  • Develop insight into diversity and inclusion

Unit Assignments

Read

A-02 Asynchronous Weekly Small Groups Discussion Forums

W-03 Small Group Discussion Forums

This week’s focus is on standards and practices for school social work and how they intersect with school culture. It is designed to help you connect professional standards with real-world school environments, fostering a deeper understanding of how school culture impacts student well-being. You can find what group you are in the A-02 Group Assignments and Description handout. Students must submit at least three replies this week in their group’s forum. Two will be your original thoughts and reflections related to the prompts. The other one is flexible and focused on engaging with peers or the prompts. In replying to your peers, they must be meaningful and additive to the discussion. The discussion prompts focus on relating to the school social work standards of practice, making connections between practice school culture and student well-being (defining and assessing school culture, practices we should engage in, and what schools could look like), and relating to the case examples provided in the textbook.

This week, the second person on each group list is the leader (unless your group determines to have somebody else do it). It is the responsibility of the group as a whole that one of the members engages in this leadership role. This team leader will develop a reply in W-03 Discussion Forum Synthesis that will provide an overview of your group’s discussion. Even though only the team leader needs to post in this forum, I’d like for everybody to read it so you can hear what other groups discussed.

Unit Resources

This week, you will read the National Association of Social Workers (2012) and their NASW Standards for School Social Work Services. On the NASW website, it describes that:

This set of standards is being revised to meet the changing needs of school social workers, students and families they serve, and local education agencies. The revised standards will reflect current trends in practice that include bullying, violence, COVID-19, and other issues. Coming in 2024. (see NASW Practice Standards Under Review in 2024)

They have missed their deadline, and the 2012 version is still the only one available. Even though it is a bit dated, it is a valuable resource that examines relevant topics such as ethics and values, assessment, intervention, decision-making, cultural competence, and interdisciplinary leadership and collaboration.

With everything happening in our political climate, this last week OSPI released guidance Protections for Immigrant Students in Washington’s K–12 Public Schools. It would be good information for you to review.

During class, we will continue our discussion of school climate. The National School Climate Center has developed a School Climate Survey. We will explore the 14 Dimensions of School Climate Measured by the CSCI. The National Center for Rural School Mental Health provides a useful tool, the Early Identification System Intervention Hub, a web-based system to identify, prevent, and intervene on student mental health concerns using a multi-tiered system of support. We will spend time in class exploring some of this system’s tools and discussing potential interventions at various levels.

While we aren’t going to be exploring these tools for this session, there are many great online resources that discuss tiered interventions. PBIS World allows you to select behaviors and helps identify interventions at each level. It is a bit more focused on classrooms versus school-wide interventions but has a lot of great resources. The Center on Multi-Tiered System of Supports provides in-depth access and connection to resources about implementing MTSS. The National Center on Intense Intervention at the American Institutes for Research has a Behavioral Intervention Tools Chart that goes through and comprehensively provides information about evidence-informed practices. The Center on Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports also has a lot of great information. Of particular note, I like the topics and resources provided under each one.

All of the presentations for this class can be found at https://presentations.jacobrcampbell.com. This week’s slides are Spring 2025 SOWK 587 Week 03 - Schools as Organizations - Understanding the Landscape.

MyHeritage is where all of the lecture videos can be found.

Reference

Jarolmen, J., & Bautista-Thomas, C. (2022). School social work: A direct practice guide (2nd ed.). Waveland Press.

National Association of Social Workers. (2012). NASW Standards for School Social Workers Services. https://www.socialworkers.org/Practice/NASW-Practice-Standards-Guidelines/NASW-Standards-for-School-Social-Work-Services

Teasley, M. L. (2017). Organizational culture and schools: A call for leadership and collaboration. Children & Schools, 39(1), 3-6. https://doi.org/10.1093/cs/cdw048

To-Do Lists

  • Attend class Saturday
  • Read Chapter three, and review material in unit resources
  • Post at least three replies in group forums
  • The team leader post a reply in the discussion forum synthesis

Updated:

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