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Lessons Learned: A Qualitative Study of School Social Workers’ Experiences Providing Crisis Response and Recovery After Targeted Gun Violence
Get PDFObjective: Targeted gun violence in schools, once uncommon tragedies, are now regular occurrences in the United States. Since 2018, there have been 533 incidents of gun violence in schools that resulted in death or injuries (Everytown for Gun Safety, 2022). Crisis response and recovery for these school communities are lengthy. Community crisis response teams often assist school districts in the immediate response; however, responsibility for immediate and ongoing interventions often falls onto the school-based mental health professionals, particularly social workers. Minimal empirical data is available regarding the experiences of “emotional first responders,” and no studies address school social workers specifically, who are personally and professional impacted by these events. This qualitative study examined the lessons learned from school social workers providing crisis response and recovery to school communities impacted by mass targeted gun violence. Specifically, this study sought to understand how school social workers navigate providing support that is often beyond their explicit roles in the school while experiencing and managing the impacts of trauma for themselves and in their communities.
Method: The researcher used grounded theory methodology to learn from the experiences of 12 MSW-prepared school social workers employed by an impacted school district at the time of mass targeted gun violence or contracted in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Multiple participants from three school districts were recruited to prevent one single point of view. Each participant completed two semi-structured interviews at two- to four-week intervals to examine their personal and professional experiences during the crisis response and recovery. The researcher used semi-structured interview guides designed to elicit experience and meaning making around additional responsibilities, crisis response preparation, and the ability to manage personal and professional impact of the trauma. Specific questions about prior training elicited perceptions on levels of confidence in crisis response and recovery skills. Data analysis used the constant comparative approach, consistent with grounded theory, to complete open and thematic inductive coding and theoretical coding grounded in systems theory and relational cultural theory concepts.
Findings: All participants discussed the importance of connection or relationship with colleagues, students, administration, and families in the response and recovery process. Students, staff, parents, and social workers all worked toward reconnection after unimaginable violence shattered the perceived safety within their workplaces and their communities. Connection through processing and supervision were critical especially in the management of STS and VT symptoms. These connections further assisted with relational resilience and empowerment as the communities moved through the phases of crisis response and recovery. Participants reinforced that response and recovery is an ongoing endeavor that requires intervention on multiple systems levels. The magnitude of the trauma often requires social workers to assume additional responsibilities outside their normative scope of practice. Participants felt their MSW education, specifically field education, provided adequate preparation for basic crisis response, but lacked the specialization to provide recovery support around the intensity of targeted gun violence-related trauma and the needs across systems in recovery and rebuilding efforts. The need and challenge of seeking out sufficient self-care for social workers also emerged.
Discussion and Implications: School social workers reported varied preparation and supports as they navigated the intersection of professional and personal trauma in the context of complex school, community, and political systems. Important factors for managing personal impact included supervision that provided both the opportunity to connect with colleagues to process/debrief their feelings and clinical case support consultation to minimize professional risk. Professional systems of support, including predictable schedules for debriefing and formal school sponsored self-care activities, should be included during the workday to improve access and engagement. To address the expressed need for more specialized training, findings suggest that CSWE may consider developing content or require MSW programs to offer course and experiential work in crisis intervention techniques, such as Psychological First Aid, to assist social workers with identification of trauma reactions and associated treatment skills with the theoretical underpinnings for their use.
Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of connection and growth-fostering relationships in crisis response and trauma recovery. These findings also support previous research which indicated social workers and other emotional first responders are at high risk for secondary traumatic stress (STS) and vicarious trauma (VT). The implications of these findings extend beyond the social work profession and to first responders within other disciplines who are exposed to trauma in their work responsibilities. The findings also include social work education implications, specifically a gap in knowledge pertaining to more specialized crisis intervention skills
Penn Library\u27s Ms. Codex 1650 - [Classical and Catholic miscellany] (Video Orientation)
No full texthttps://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1122/thumbnail.jp
Subject and Object Clitic Pronouns in Valdostan Francoprovençal:The Fenisan Variety
Get PDFSubject clitics (SCLs) are a debated topic regarding their structural position and their categorial status. Accounting for a phenomenon he observed in some Francoprovencal varieties and that he calls `OCL-for-SCL\u27, Roberts (2015, 2018b) proposes that SCLs in Francoprovencal are the result of the morphophonological process of fission. Focusing on a particular variety of Francoprovencal (the Fenisan Francoprovencal, or FFP), and based on Roberts\u27 (2010) approach of cliticization as incorporation, this study shows that Roberts\u27 proposal on the nature of SCLs in Francoprovencal cannot account for the data in FFP. Relying on the behavior of subject and object clitics with lexical and functional verbs, I show that SCLs in FFP are better analyzed as syntactic objects base-generated in argumental position inside the vP/VP domain. FFP also provides new arguments for considering both the auxiliary and possessive verb have and both the auxiliary and copular verb be as functional verbs, as the clitics behave differently with these verbs contrary to lexical verbs. This study also shows that there can be a direct interface between syntax and phonology regarding the representation of clitic pronouns
Scrambling and Reconstruction Asymmetries
Get PDFThis paper investigates a series of properties exhibited by different types of scrambling in Mongolian and their implications on the distinction between A- and Ā-movement. In Mongolian, short and intermediate scrambling behave like A-movement, whereas long-distance scrambling shows mixed A/Ā-properties. A close examination of scrambling in this language reveals that Condition C reconstruction effects, which appear to distinguish some instances of Ā-movement from A-movement, in fact do not track the A/Ā-distinction. I relate the phenomenon in Mongolian to a language-specific case assignment mechanism, under a late merger approach (Takahashi & Hulsey 2009)
Universal Concord as Syntactic Agreement
Get PDFThis paper argues that universal concord is attested in Cantonese and offers a syntactic agreement account. The Cantonese verbal suffix -can is shown to be a concord element that requires the presence of a universal quantifier but it lacks inherent quantificational force. Drawing crucial evidence from minimality and locality, I propose that -can carries an uninterpretable universal feature that agrees with a genuine universal quantifier. Consequently, the empirical landscape of concord is extended to universal quantifiers. Moreover, this study also offers additional support for a syntactic approach to concord by exploring minimality effects, which have not received enough attention in the studies on concord
Unlocking Compacted Heterochromatin through Modulation of Associated Proteins
No full textThe hundreds of cell types that compose human body tissues contain identical genomes yet vary considerably in their gene activity and protein content. While the underlying blueprints that define these diverse cell types exist in all cells, a given cell’s specific transcriptomic and proteomic landscape is controlled by an incredibly complex system of gene regulatory complexes and epigenetic marks which promote activation of cell-type specific gene expression profiles and silence alternative cell fate genes. However, the mechanism by which specific genomic loci are silenced in different cell types is still not well understood. Here I strove to understand the vital contribution of tightly compacted heterochromatin on cell identity at specific loci. I studied how 97 unique heterochromatin-associated human proteins play a role in heterochromatin-based gene and repetitive element silencing. As H3K9me3 can block cellular reprogramming, we used a human-induced fibroblast to hepatocyte (hiHep) reprogramming model to uncover diverse genes and repetitive elements silenced by each protein. We conducted RNA-seq experiments both with and without the addition of hiHep reprogramming factors. We identified four unique clusters of these proteins based on their common targets of repression, including differences in H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 marks across genes derepressed by each cluster. In an additional study, I investigated how KRAB domain-containing zinc finger proteins (KRAB-ZFPs) might silence hepatic genes in alternate lineages. I identified six putative liver lineage antagonistic KRAB-ZFPs. A mostly unstudied primate-specific KRAB-ZFP known as ZNF695 became the top candidate for allowing hundreds of genes, including hepatic genes, to be derepressed following knockdown in the hiHep reprogramming model and facilitated the widespread loss of H3K9me3. I mapped ZNF695 localization throughout the genome and tied these patterns to the observed gene expression changes. Additionally, we were able to see that depletion of ZNF695 in hiHeps transplanted in a diseased liver mouse model were able to produce higher levels of human albumin that hiHeps without the knockdown. Together, these findings greatly expanded our knowledge of H3K9me3-based repression in humans and provided a novel picture of ZNF695 regulatory capabilities
Synthesis and Reactivity of Flexible Dicopper Bis(Pyridyldiimine) Macrocyclic Complexes
No full textMethanol is a viable fuel source and a common feedstock in the chemical industry. Currently, much of the methanol produced by industry is derived from natural gas (methane). Yet, the one-step selective oxidation of methane to methanol remains challenging due to the potential formation of overoxidation products (CO2, H2O, etc.). Within the past 20 years, the reactive Cu2(II,II)-µ-O site within Cu(II)-ZSM-5 has been shown capable of the selective oxidation of methane to methanol through a hydrogen atom transfer (HAT)/radical rebound mechanism. The proximity of the metals and geometric constraints may allow for the copper centers to work in concert when facilitating HAT. To probe how metal-metal distance and coordination geometry influence C–H bond oxidation, it is highly desirable to study the properties and reactivity profile of discrete multinuclear model complexes. Here, we report a new protocol for the synthesis of homobimetallic copper(II) complexes using various derivatives of a macrocycle containing two pyridyldiimine units. A series of Cu2-(µ-X)n bis(4-tert-butylpyridyldiimine) macrocyclic complexes (n = 1, 2; X = Cl, Br, N3, NO2, OTMS, OH) were synthesized and crystallographically characterized. The development of new macrocyclic ligands was also undertaken to provide a modular synthesis of bis(pyridyldiimine) ligand scaffolds, in which the steric and electronic profiles can be easily tuned. Using the newly established synthetic protocols and macrocyclic ligands, two Cu2(II,II)-µ-OH complexes were prepared and analyzed by cyclic voltammetry and low-temperature 1H NMR spectroscopy. The macrocyclic complexes differed in the aliphatic linkers between the pyridyldiimine units (ethylene vs. propylene linker). New Cu2(II,II)-µ-O complexes were accessed through deprotonation of the hydroxide starting materials. The µ-oxo complexes were found competent for hydrogen atom transfer reactions, showing reactivity towards weak C-H and N-H bonds. From these studies, the size of the macrocycle was found to influence the reactivity of the µ-oxo complexes. The HAT reactions afforded Cu2(I,II)-µ-OH complexes, and O-H BDFEs of 74.3 ± 1.4 (propylene-linked complex) and 79.0 ± 1.5 kcal/mol (ethylene-linked complex) were estimated using Bordwell’s thermodynamic square scheme approach
Human Dimensions of Building Performance: Sensing, Modeling, and Predicting Indoor Environmental Quality
No full textThe indoor environment critically affects occupant health and comfort, especially since humans spend most of the day indoors. Meanwhile, occupant activities, preferences, and behaviors may contribute to a significant amount of building energy consumption. The focus of environmental buildings shifted from automated systems to a paradigm of collective environmental design since the second half of the 20th century, emphasizing human dimensions in building performance, which allows occupants to participate as active/passive actuators and sensors. Concurrently, increased environmental awareness further spurred the green building movement intending to encourage more high-performance buildings. The question remains as to whether high-performance buildings are also healthy buildings. This dissertation aims to cast new light on how environmental design and building systems work for people as well as how building sensors and human senses work together to inform the organization and optimization of various performance targets such as sustainability, public health, and resiliency. Special attention is given to the non-visual environment attempting to facilitate human-in-the-loop of the building design and operation processes. In order to achieve this goal, environmental monitoring, data analysis, and human subject recruitments are developed to characterize the human dimension of building performance