My primary goal is to keep kids in school. I'm a social worker by title, but most of my time is spent working with truant kids. I do home visits, I work to engage families in their children's education, or whoever is responsible for them. I try to track kids into a more positive situation if they look like they might drop out.
My first goal is to engage them at Central, but I realize there are some times when traditional education isn't applicable, or it's just not the right place for some kids. So we try to place them in an alternative program at that point, like Youth Build, a GED program, or the GED track at CCRI. We also work with Job Corps, a job training and education program, that just set up an office in Rhode Island. Until recently, we had to send our students to Massachusetts or Connecticut, which meant far fewer students were willing to take a chance on the program. It's a great opportunity for students who are attracted to a particular career. With an office in Rhode Island, kids are less scared about going since they can come home on the weekends without a problem.
I've been at Central for four years, but I've been in the school department all together for fifteen years. I was at an elementary school before I came here. Working with elementary kids is harder than high school kids because you really have to work with the whole family to actually change a kid's life. Since the kids are so dependent on their parents, a real change can only happen if you can get the parents to change too. With older kids, you have to affect the change in them. Their parents might be a bad influence on them, but at this point their lives are in their own hands. When they become adults, it's all about the choices they make for themselves. I try to help them realize what those good choices are, and to make them.
When I was these kids' ages, nobody told me that I could go to college. I never thought I was smart enough to compete in college. After high school I went into a business program, but it was neither challenging nor fun. But that led me into junior college so that I could find something that I liked. Now I help kids realize that as long as they have dreams, they can accomplish anything.
A worker at the city's Department of Human Services where I worked told me I could do more. She helped me enroll at RIC for a Master's in social work. She pushed me, and for that, I give her thanks.
There was a young girl at Central when I first came here. She had a baby and dropped out, but then she came back. But she had another baby and dropped out again. I worked with her for a long time while she was back here, but there really wasn't much I could do. I ended up seeing her name on the list for a summer GED program, but she never showed up. I went to her house to see her several times and convinced her to come to the classes. Now she's at CCRI and I'm very proud of her.
I work closely with families—I try to engage parents as much as possible to make sure that they support their kids. I do home visits and counsel parents. I try to open lines of communication so that they can work together. That's how life is—you have to negotiate and compromise with the people around you. But when you're in high school and living at home, you're not paying rent, and you're not paying for food. There's a certain way in which you can't complain about the rules, and I work with kids and parents to meet halfway.
In my line of work, you don't always see the successes on a daily basis. You measure them differently here. I feel a great success if I see a students finish out the year at school when he or she had though they would drop out. You measure them incrementally, the little steps that make a lot of difference. One constant, though, is that I try to delay parenthood as much as possible for these kids.
I have four children myself, and I'm constantly working with them. All of them are still struggling with life in their own ways. They're not succeeding the ways they want to yet, but they're still looking for their own niches.
My family growing up was big—10 kids, no money, but we had everything that we needed. No one in our family knew how poor we were. Now, with so many single parent households, people all know exactly how poor they are. Communities don't exist in the same way they used to. We all used to help each other out, but that sense of community isn't there anymore. People need all the help they can get, so that's what we try to do for them.
Harold Metts>>
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