rachelmarcus’s Articles at WOW Fellowship Blog

Eighth Grade Graduation at Trailblazer’s Academy

The past month at DOMUS and Trailblazer’s Academy has truly been a special experience. Through the various meetings and school events that I became a part of, I was able to get to know some of the students on a personal level, as well as get a better appreciation and understanding of what family advocates do on a typical day.

Additionally, I was able to input and analyze data related to student attendance and experience. To see these students everyday come in with a smile on their face, knowing the obstacles that they have had to face or currently overcoming, is remarkable.

While continuing my work with the DOMUS Foundation, I have been able to see and work with various emotional support resources for the students, including the school psychologist. While working with the school psychologist who works with both of DOMUS’ charter schools, I was able to see the types of cognitive and executive functioning tests that are done for students who have individualized educational plans (IEP’s), as well as the reports that are created to determine what specific resources each child needs depending on the given IEP.

From this information, along with the behavioral reports, grades, and attendance records, families were contacted to suggest summer school for their students to ensure that they don’t fall behind or lose momentum in the progress that they have made this previous academic year.

The family advocates also are making sure that their students have the proper resources during the summer. Every academic year, a certain amount of home visits have to be made for each student by their family advocate. During the summer, the family advocates take advantage of their time without students to schedule home visits with families. Before this is done, attendance reports, as well as home visit reports must be inputted and reviewed to see which students should be prioritized.

Over the past few weeks, I have been helping with creating and mailing these types of documents for the school psychologist and family advocates, as well as being trained to go on these home visits with a family advocate.

Working with DOMUS has made me realize how vital social work is as profession as well as the impact it can make on a student’s life. I was recently able to help a family advocate with finding a scholarship for three young boys to attend camp for part of the summer. I spent hours calling and emailing camps to see if there were any openings for these kids. When I was finally able to find a camp that would give a scholarship and had openings for the boys. It was a relief to the family, the family advocate and to me that we were able to enroll the kids in camp. These boys are able to meet kids their age and to start their adjustment with their new guardians in a new living area. Helping connect students and families to resources such as summer camps or summer schools for the Trailblazer’s Academy students, as well as other youth is another rewarding and crucial role of a family advocate through the DOMUS Foundation.

This summer, I will be working with the Domus Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with adolescents in low income, at risk situations in Stamford, Connecticut.

The Domus Foundation works on behavior modification and attendance retention at their charter schools through multiple models, including the Family Advocate model. The Family Advocate model looks at the emotional well being of the children, in and outside of school. This requires at home visits, in school visits, student success plans, and more.

Over the next two and a half months, I will be shadowing these Family Advocates, as well as helping gather behavioral and attendance based data for the future success of the Domus Foundation. Since the students are in school for the first few weeks of my time here, I am helping the middle school, Trailblazers Academy, with preparation for data analysis of attendance and the eighth graders’ graduation.

Trailblazer Academy student volunteers with some of the Family Advocate staff

By the second day I already knew a handful of the seventh and eighth grade students and was helping them with their science fair projects due at the end of the week.

In order to get to know the students better, I joined the Director of Family Advocates, as well as a couple of the Family Advocates on a community service project. A sense of community is important to the schools that partner with Domus . Many children lack this feeling at home and the goal for the schools is to make each and every student feel comfortable and safe with every staff member.

Cleaning up Trailblazers Academy with a student

During the two hour community service project, the students and Family Advocate staff cleaned up the outside of the school by picking up trash. We then debriefed with the students about their volunteering experience and what they would like to do in the future. This community service experience showed the students how important it is to help others and how good it can feel to do so. By the end of the activity, I had students coming up to me asking which volunteer project they could participate in over the summer and if I could be their Family Advocate for the next school year!

At this moment, it made me realize how important this internship is to me and to the students. The majority of these students have been sent to Trailblazers Academy because they were deemed the “trouble kids”and have been expelled from their other schools. Most students have experienced trauma and struggle to be successful individuals while trying to figure out how to cope with their personal situations.

The fact that some of these students started to open up to me with their stories and want me be a continuing part of their lives shows how these children are craving attention and love that will help them succeed in life. As my first week of my internship is coming to an end, I cannot wait to continue my relationships with the staff and students at Domus and Trailblazers Academy!