I Never Knew, 10 Years Later

by J. Lawrence Dixon, MSW

     It was January 3, 2009, that I began working in a South Phoenix school for Communities in Schools. I was an AmeriCorps Vista, freshly graduated with a bachelor’s in nothing and ready to save the world. On day one, I was told I had to always leave the school before dark. I was educated, but I was very young, privileged, and sheltered from poverty. My family was not “rich,” but I also had never known what it was like to go to bed hungry.

     That community did not trust me; they were afraid I was a new social worker who would call ICE or CPS on them. Even then, on some level, I understood how dangerous I appeared. I was alone for the first few weeks, until I started to share a portable classroom with the parent liaison. I remember how friendly she was. She proudly told me she was a Mexican born in the U.S. whose first language was Spanish. She had warned me about the strange social worker who brought her dog to work and called CPS because students were dirty. She warned me that everyone was watching me to see what I would do.

     At first, she would ask me hypothetical questions about social problems. The questions regarded if I could get two or three food boxes next week. Maybe, did I have two, size small uniforms on hand? Did I have any more school supplies left in the closet? She asked me about shelters that would not require “papers” or how someone could connect DV survivors with local resources. She never gave me names but happily took what supplies and resources I had.

     She made sure I had a 100% return on the community assessment. She gathered local mothers to join in on presentations I had scheduled. She encouraged attendance to the first school health fair that I had been working on for months. She showed parents how to use the computer lab I had helped build from donations. I never knew how many people she helped, how many people she helped me help.

     Ten years later, I look back and realize - that was the first time I saw the importance of human relationships. Our collaboration helped decrease fear of me within the community. She gave me more insight into the neighborhood than any book on culture could. She encouraged me, mothered me, and mentored me. Little did she know that despite the hardships of my first year in Arizona (divorce, injury, and homelessness), our relationship changed my relationship to helping. It set the foundation for the social worker I would become: J the Roving Social Worker who travels to learn things that she did not know she needed to know.

Traveling from desert to mountains to frozen prairies, J is The Roving Social Worker. Follow her social work and travel journey on Instagram or Twitter, @Travel_MSW.