Student Story

Julia Toscano

I started my practicum experience at John Ruhrah Elementary / Middle School, and it almost immediately turned into a full-time job which I am still doing. At the school, our student population is 95% Latino with Spanish as a first language. Baltimore doesn’t provide sufficient resources for people who don’t speak English. Especially not for people with different legal status, those without health insurance, and so on. The school already had clinical social workers, but my role is different. It is a demanding role with a wide focus, but that is why I came to the Center for Restorative Change in the first place as a Peace Corps scholar; to find somewhere I could have an impact on social justice, systemic oppression and racism, with a community organizing and social work lens. 

My job is to help the school overcome barriers for success. Though not my first language, I speak Spanish every day, and I see the struggles people experience given limited resources for non-English speaking populations. Every ten minutes or so, I am often meeting with somebody new who approaches me with a different challenge to overcome. Balancing those needs as part of the whole is my calling. 

Beyond the language barriers it was surprising to me how much our families were struggling to meet even the most basic needs. Families need food, for example. They need basic housing, or access to healthcare or dental services. My role is schoolwide, bringing support and resources to the entire school population. I coordinate all the afterschool programs. We have the health department come and do screenings. We have a nonprofit dentist who comes in. I also develop partnerships with outside organizations that can support our students. Our focus is on helping families be self-sufficient. We have programs to help parents build wealth through homeownership. We have case managers who help families who can’t afford rent. There’s a family stability program, and it is somewhere for me to refer families to. Case managers there might work with families for six months or more. My role has been to help people put the pieces together. 

It took a while to really see just how much these needs intersected with each other. That is when I felt certain there was substantial work for me to do helping knit the community’s needs and capacity for change together into a cohesive whole. I could see how my role could be stretching and fulfilling beyond the practicum experience. The Center and the school were both helpful as I transitioned into the work full time. The macro-level classes I took on community organizing and planning helped me appreciate the bigger picture. I may have had a tendency to pigeonhole myself in previous working environments but my instructor and mentor helped me forge the relationships I needed in this role to be successful. As a group we can do our best to really bring a change to the school here.