I am currently enrolled in a Journalism class and one of our assignments was to profile someone. My professor brought in a professor at the School of Social Work named Tony Alvarez to speak to us about his life and his job.
Tony began by talking to us about his life, he was born in the Philippines and then moved to Michigan in the 1970's. He originally began as a chemical engineer, but soon realized that was not what he wanted to do. His wife, a social worker in Detroit, began to inspire him to enter the field. He got his masters degree in social work from the University of Michigan and soon after, began teaching.
Enough with the history lesson. Why Tony Alvarez?
Well, he is a different kind of social worker, instead of sitting with kids in an office or in a classroom, he takes troubled kids out to play games. This reminded me of class because as Tony was discussing taking these kids on adventures to play games, we had discusses children and games and the importance of competitiveness. What Tony does is this, he gets a group of troubled kids, and will take them to do various activities such as rock climbing, sledding, ropes courses and other various types of games including exercise. According to Tony, many of the kids he works with feel like they don't have anything to fight for, his games spark a competitive streak that makes them actually want to fight for something.
1. play is fundamental activity2. play expresses both creativity and conformity3. children’s games are “serious” fun
Hearing Tony Alvarez speak was inspiring and I highly recommend any students interested in social work to take his class!
I only recently heard about Tony, which is a bummer because if I'd known about him before, I would have invited him as a guest lecturer to this class. So thanks for sharing this with the class, Nicole.
ReplyDeleteNicole,
ReplyDeleteI am currently majoring in psychology and thus have been curious about less traditional approaches to therapy. I contacted a social worker that had visited my high school senior year and who also attended my school when she was younger because she specialized in adventure therapy. Tony Alvarez's work seems to describe just that. I was very interested in adventure therapy for the exact reasons you share. It allows kids, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds, to figuratively and literally fight for their future and what they believe in. Furthermore, with all that we learned about games and their relation to kids specifically, it is evident that in order for children to learn, they need to be enjoying what they are doing. Thus adventure therapy, which lets kids go outside and play games, seems like a very effective way for them to actually take in the concepts that the social workers or therapists are trying to get them to understand, versus just sitting in an office space talking.
Taylor Rothman
This post reminds me of Corporate social responsibility as it relates to business. Many large firms have a department committed to social work and helping troubled areas of society. Many management consulting firms such as accenture work on projects aimed at helping kids in need and try to find solutions that help the less fortunate. Last week I had an informational interview with an MBA student and he explained to me how even as a graduate level business student he was getting involved in a project helping people in Detroit get jobs
ReplyDeleteAbout a month ago a very well respected business entrepreneur came and gave a presentation about how he created a business all about social work. His name was Greg Boyle and he started this business called homeboy industries. Coming from california he explained that there is so much gang violence and drug problems in nearby neighborhoods. His motto was "nothing stops a bullet like a job" so he began working and trying to get these gang members at risk of going to jail jobs to support themselves. He's a pretty cool guy, check his business out at:
http://homeboy-industries.org/