What’s your Legacy? by Jackie Strait, MSW, LCSW, DSW Candidate 2013

What’s your Legacy?

The second year of the DSW program offers students the opportunity each month to learn from some of the foremost scholars and practitioners in the field of clinical social work and related disciplines. Most recently, the DSW Class of 2013 was fortunate to study with Sandy Bloom, a leading thinker in the field of organizational trauma (and a native of Philadelphia!). She began her talk with the routine introductions, asking us to share about our practice specialty and comment on what we hoped to learn during our weekend together. She then asked a question that has since caused a profound shift in my experience of myself as both a student and a clinical social worker. She asked us to consider our legacy. What do we hope to contribute to the field? What legacy do we want to leave? Although I am more than twelve months into my formal education in the DSW program, I hadn’t yet considered this question. I could readily share what I hoped to get out of the program, what I hoped to study, and what I hoped to learn, but this question about what I hoped to offer to generations of social workers to come caught me by surprise. And yet, this is precisely the shift that the DSW program encourages and indeed inspires students to make.

This shift is one from consumption to production, from that of getting to that of giving. We are no longer asked what we hope to learn, but instead what we hope to teach and how we hope to inspire. We are no longer simply consumers of knowledge, but instead encouraged to contribute to the development of both theory and practice. We are prompted by leaders in the field to consider not just what we hope to do in the field, but instead what legacy we’d like to leave. I looked around the room and realized that the seeds of these legacies were being planted right before my eyes: Destigmatizing mental illness. Developing more culturally competent social work practice models. Creating and implementing a trauma-informed curriculum for schools of social work. Expanding the current knowledge base of the difficulties faced by adults with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Reducing recidivism rates for formerly-incarcerated individuals. Healing the psychological, emotional and societal wounds of sexual trauma.

What’s your legacy? It is a simple question, and yet it holds profound meaning and far-reaching implications. These three small words imply both hope and expectation, and thus inspire the shift from student to scholar.

By Jackie Strait, MSW, LCSW, DSW Candidate 2013