Like many school social workers, Cassandra Klein has an office stocked with snacks, clothing, socks, coats, gloves and other essentials students might reach for throughout the day. She even has weekend bags of food and produce to send home with students in need.
As a family support specialist at Cleveland’s Memorial School, Klein’s job is to provide wraparound services to students and their families so they have everything they need to succeed at school.
“I try to make sure families have resources so that education becomes their top priority,” Klein said.
Despite her ability to provide families with so many of the basics that help ensure their success, there was one thing she never felt comfortable offering.
“If I’m grieving, I feel like I have a pretty healthy way of dealing with it. But when other people grieve—especially like little kids—I’m just like, ‘Are you OK?’” Klein explained. “I’m just not that great at comforting others.”
So when she saw an email last winter from a colleague about the “Social Work with Death, Grief and Loss” course offered through a new program at Case Western Reserve University’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, she saw an opportunity to learn.
“I’d like to learn about grief and loss,” she recalled thinking. “Maybe this will help give me a little more insight.”
The experience also gave her the chance to entertain another idea she had: earning her master’s degree.
As it turned out, this new program—Classroom Without Walls—was designed to spur social workers like Klein to pursue both.
The Mandel School launched the program for two purposes: to create transformative learning experiences for both students and community learners—social work professionals with bachelor’s degrees who have worked in human services—and to encourage social work professionals to further their careers by enrolling in the Master of Social Work (MSW) program. Community learners, who hail from various Cleveland organizations, learn alongside traditional MSW graduate students, bringing real-life experiences to the class.