THE MAKING OF “BECOMING A SOCIAL WORKER”.

I am a professor of social work at Fordham University who teaches both foundation level (HBSE) and advanced level courses in the clinical area. I have also done field advising. My ideas for this film project and research study began brewing as I was Chair of the Curriculum Committee, which is responsible for overseeing and evaluating changes in the graduate school curriculum for social work education. After listening to many ideas from faculty about how we should change our curriculum, I decided that it would be interesting to do a research project in which I could learn from students, themselves, about what aspects of the curriculum they saw as most relevant to their growth as social workers. I began a study on social work education, entitled “becoming a social worker”. Because I was using a qualitative methodology, and using a small sample, I wanted to make the sample homogenous in terms of field assignments and focused on students who were doing their placement with older adults. I chose older adults, rather than another population, because I wanted to contribute to the growing interest in social work education about the need to infuse content on aging into the curriculum. Because of my filmmaking background, I chose to augment the research project with a film project.

Limitations of many social work educational films.

As a professor, I am often frustrated when I want to add audiovisual materials into my classroom, as most are too long and require that I preview each film and select a small slice of the film to augment my lectures. I also have difficulty with many of the social work training films that use “experts” to illustrate practice issues; as students often feel removed from these older well trained professionals. In addition, most of the films that highlight experts include white older males, while the demographics of social work students are primarily younger students , often people of color. Instead, I chose to use real students as the highlighted social workers, hoping that students would more easily relate to people like themselves, who were not “perfect” but still “good enough”. I also hoped that using “real” clients would also make the material more accessible to the students’ real life internships.

How the films were made.

I recruited a small sample of beginning students (8) to be in a one year longitudinal research study. In order to quality, the students had to be doing their field placement with older adults and be willing to have me interview them overtime on film and observe and film them in their field placements with their clients. Permission had to be gotten from the students’ field supervisors, as well. The students were offered a small honorarium for their participation in the study. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board and each student, supervisor and client who were observed/filmed were informed of the risks and benefits of the study and signed an IRB approved consent form. After a full year of collecting the data, I screened the video segments over and over again and then edited the material into short films to be used for teaching social work. The edited films were shown to several groups of students and faculty for feedback for the final project and study guide.

~Prof. Judith Smith

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Other film credits include:

WELFARE-TO-WORK: THROUGH THE EYES OF MOTHERS
Executive Producer.
Rockland Department of Social Services, 2001.
A twenty-minute video on the experiences of mothers with young children as they transition from welfare-to-work.
Distributed by Developing Images, LLC.

THE MOTHER'S CENTER
Co-Producer, Director and Editor.
Family Service Association, 1985.
A twenty minute video illustrating the philosophy and implementation of a neighborhood program for young mothers.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BIRTH OF THE HUMAN INFANT
Post-Production Producer, Director and Editor.
The Margaret S. Mahler Psychiatric Research Foundation, 1983.
A series of three films illustrating infant development within the first three years of life.
Distributed by the Margaret Mahler Psychiatric Research Foundation.

THE WOMAN’S FILM
Cinematographer and Editor.
San Francisco Newsreel, 1971.
A documentary on the development of the early women’s movement,
with a focus on its impact on working class women and women of color.
Distributed by Third World Newsreel, NYC.