The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man decided to explain the problem with social services. He argued, “How’s a person going to benefit from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a social worker?” He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about social workers- “Bleeding heart liberals.” To stress his point, he said to one of the guests, “You’re a social worker, Bonnie. Be honest. What do you make?”
Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness, replied, “You want to know what I make?” She paused for a second, and then began. “Well, my colleagues and I make safe places for abused children and battered wives. In the process, we do our best to make them feel that they didn’t deserve the treatment they got, so they can go out and do better in their lives. We make arrangements for the elderly to go home from hospitals with adequate care, and run support groups so their caregivers don’t burn out. When a young widow or single mother doesn’t know where to turn, my colleagues and I make sure that she knows- whether people like it or not- what benefits she’s eligible for. And we do the best we can to make sure she doesn’t get lost in the bureaucracy. We make plans with clients so they can get jobs and homes. And this is only a start.” “You want to know what social workers make?” Bonnie asked again. She paused and looked at every person at the table.
“We make visits in neighborhoods that a lot of people wouldn’t go to on a bet, because we know that people there are in need. And we make friends there who invite us back to their weddings, their luaus, and the opening of the community center that we campaigned for. We make time to listen to the elderly, the mentally ill, the lonely. And we have knowledge and skills to help them make real improvements in their lives. We make appointments with officials and testify before the legislature to get everyone in the community a fair share.
Some of us teach, to make the next generation’s social workers. And sometimes, we make plans with our friends and families- and then have to break them because there’s an accident, a fire, a disaster, here or in another state or even another country, and a social worker is needed.” Bonnie paused one last time and then continued. “so when people want to judge us by what we make, we can hold our heads up high and say, ‘I make a difference… what do you make?”
I came across this, author unknown.
*Edit: Thanks to a submission from one of our users, we have the original Taylor Mali’s “What Teachers Make.”
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That literally blew me away, excellent find Court 🙂
Love, Love, Love!!!
Wonderful Courtney!
Yep – that was a good answer!!
This has been taken from here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU
Excellent social workers version, though.
This is a modification of Taylor Mali’s “What Teachers Make.” Here is the text: http://taylormali.com/poems-online/what-teachers-make/
I don’t know if you can edit this post, but if you can, it would be good to give credit to Taylor Mali’s original, even though you didn’t modify it.
Thank you for the link. I have updated the post to include a link to the original. Thank you all for following.
I too read about it but its something different point of view you have posted here. I don’t hope that I would get better stuff than this.
Social Work Graduate School Examples
Brilliant!
This is a clear definition of life’s pioneers.
Wow! What a great answer…people always talk about social worker’s are under pay and maybe we are but it’s no different than any other position that is underpay such as teacher’s who also make a difference!
True but you will never fix the problem with people
This is very good! Unfortunately many of these social service roles , at least in New York State are not done by actual certified social workers.