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Studying the Trend in Youth Violence School violence has become a high-profile issue in the United States over the past several years. Even very young children seem not to be immune to, or safe from, the prevailing culture of guns and violence in the media. This dismaying trend has left many people, especially those who work with children, wondering how to respond. Community leaders, teachers, social workers, juvenile justice workers and others will have a unique opportunity to come together on the Smith campus on June 9 to address the myriad issues surrounding school violence. A one-day conference -- titled "Safe Schools: Building Fortresses or Opening the Doors to Community?" -- is being sponsored by the Smith School for Social Work (SSW) and was planned in conjunction with the Springfield and Northampton School Departments and the Hampden County District Attorney's Office. Participants will hear two internationally recognized keynote speakers: Jim Garbarino, Ph.D., director of Cornell University's Family Life Development Center, and Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., community violence expert and associate dean of Harvard's School of Public Health. They also will have the opportunity to take part in more than 40 workshops covering an array of topics, all centered on finding appropriate, effective responses to the growing trend of youth violence. The seed for this unique event was planted last summer by School for Social Work students after violence erupted at Columbine High School in Colorado. A small group of SSW students who were working as interns in two inner-city Springfield schools got together with Anita Lightburn, dean of the SSW, to express their concerns. The interns felt strongly that Smith, as one of the leading schools of social work in the country, should proactively address this problem in its own community. What followed was the formation of a planning committee, comprising SSW faculty and students, members of local school departments, and the district attorney's office in Hampden County, which, over the course of several months of careful planning, developed the Safe Schools conference. The committee was chaired by Irene Rodriguez-Martin, the SSW's director of continuing education and external affairs, who said in a recent interview that this kind of collaboration is unusual for Smith's School for Social Work. "The school has been making a lot of inroads in the past five years or so to do more community collaboration," she asserts, "but this is the first time that we've really had a very broad range of disciplines represented. As you look through the workshops you see it." Workshop topics include an overview of the juvenile justice system, an exploration of how parental substance abuse and violence at home can affect children, the importance of proactive gay and lesbian alliances in schools, and mentoring children, among many others. The two keynote speakers, Prothrow-Stith and Garbarino, will each cover different aspects of understanding and responding to youth violence. Garbarino, who is known for his books on the subject, including Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment (1995) and Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them (1999), will talk about the human face of children who commit violent acts. Garbarino maintains that children are not necessarily angrier than they used to be, but their choices for expressing and venting their anger have changed. "He speaks very compassionately about children," Rodriguez-Martin said. "He talks about children whose opportunities are compromised by the environment in which they live, and tries to show how we as a society got to this point, how it is that we have 6-year-olds with guns." Deborah Prothrow-Stith, considered a leading authority on community violence, believes that violence is a societal "disease" that can be prevented through rigorous public health strategies. "She is going to talk about a cohesive and comprehensive community response and present a model for how communities should respond to violence," said Rodriguez-Martin. Despite the wealth of expertise and information represented by the conferences' offerings, the registration fee is only $50, a result of the planning committee's desire to make the program accessible to everyone in the community. The speakers are being supported by a special endowment in continuing education. Those interested in attending should respond quickly: although the deadline for registration is May 25, the conference sponsors are expecting a large turnout. Those involved in producing the Safe Schools conference have set three goals for the event: to increase participants' understanding of violence in our culture; to share successful intervention models; and to create working partnerships across a wide variety of professional disciplines, in a united effort to prevent violence. "We're hoping to create a lot of networks so people can take this work back to their own communities," said Rodriguez-Martin. "It's an opportunity for Smith to facilitate the dissemination of information in a very meaningful way. And that's our service back to the community." For more information or a conference brochure, call Kathy Carlson at (413) 585-7950, or e-mail the School for Social Work at kcarlson@ais.smith.edu. |
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