Adventurer Tony

Until I met Tony Alvarez, I thought that social workers were all the same. Well, they aren't. Tony Alvarez is whats known as an "adventure social worker" and after hearing him speak, it completely changed my perspective on social workers.

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.

In our lecture regarding children and games, we had three take-away points
1. play is fundamental activity2. play expresses both creativity and conformity3. children’s games are “serious” fun

Tony hit on all three of these points. The kids he takes to play all need that time. It gets their extra energy out and also is an outlet from them to release any frustrations. Play is also an expression of creativity and conformity, creativity is important for obvious reasons, but the conformity aspect teaches many of these undisciplined kids, discipline. Also, the games are serious fun, they are a way for Tony to get through to the kids while they are playing and enjoying themselves. The games also teach them to be self reliant and to make decisions about what is right or wrong.


Hearing Tony Alvarez speak was inspiring and I highly recommend any students interested in social work to take his class!