Parallel Process

I love social work. Because there are only three other social workers at my agency, I do not have many opportunities to be among a large group of comrades. So I was very excited when two weeks ago I had the opportunity to sit and talk with 15 other social workers.

I am supervising a social work student this semester. It is intimidating and anxiety-producing and apparently those feelings reflect a parallel process to my student's experience. I am taking the SIFI course (social workers all know what SIFI refers to, but no one seems to remember what it stands for) so that I can become officially certified in HOW to be a supervisor forever after. And what fun! For two hours on the first day of class, we all shared thoughts about our own experiences as beginning students, and then talked about how we were preparing for our new supervisees. I didn't say much at that point since, oops, I hadn't really thought about any "preparation." Other workers talked about how their agencies had formal orientations for students, had taken the students out to lunch, had already assigned a client caseload for each student, etc..... Hmmm. I hadn't done any of that. But this is new for me, and my agency has not hosted students for a few years--protocol, what protocol??

Despite my sheepish smile of avoidance, I was so glad to listen to all of these like-minded individuals talking about the very unique experience of "field placement" Hearing things like: "What is the organizational culture of your agency; continue to be reflecting and reevalutating as a new supervisor; if your culture is barely organized chaos, provide students with a safe haven" warm my heart. I had forgotten that there is a whole other vocabulary in social work because it has become almost second nature to me. I love speaking other languages!

In today's SIFI session, I sat in a small group with fellow SW's and talked about ethical dilemnas such as:
A) Your student presents you with a rather expensive gift on your birthday (or at the end of field placement). Do you accept the gift? If yes, why? If no, why?
B) After a few weeks at the agency, your student discloses [social work word!!] that he is gay and wonders if you are gay also. How do you respond?

Perhaps to non-social workers, these questions may not seem like dilemnas. To us, however, they are laden with underlying meanings and messages that are critical to the ethical and professional nature of social work. Finally, at the end of the class, one supervisor talked about how her new student had started co-facilitating a group and was struggling with issues of self-disclosure. She mentioned, in passing, that the group had 23 teenage participants and many people (including myself) gasped. "A group with 23 people??!!" "Group work requires specific skills and planning. What is the goal of the group? Do you think you can accomplish that with 23 people??" As we got up to leave, the woman next to me muttered, "You can't do a group with 23 people. That poor student," and I smiled in recognition---we speak the same language.