Advocacy in Social Work Practice:

Freedman, Ethan

Professor Katrina Balovlenkov

Columbia University School for Social Work, New York

Submitted in partial fulfillment as a Preparation for Advocacy Assignment within the requirements for Columbia’s School for Social Work program and Prof. Katrina Balovlenkov Advocacy in Social Work Practice course.

Acknowledgements:

In introducing the following work, I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory on which we learn, work, and resource from at Columbia University School of Social Work is land of the Lenape and Wappinger indigenous peoples. Let us commit ourselves to the struggle against the forces that have dispossessed the Lenape, Wappinger, and other indigenous people of their lands.

I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Katrina Balovlenkov and her class in Advocacy in Social Work Practice (SOCWT7103) for introducing me to pivotal social work principles. Moreover, my peers who I worked closely in discussion and were very influential in developing thoughts around this paper. I appreciate everyone in the class for the ideas they have assisted in generating. With these acknowledgements, I present the following work of my own.

Advocacy in Social Work Practice: Preparation for Advocacy Assignment

While at Columbia School of Social Work concentrating in Leadership, Management, and Entrepreneurship for my Master’s, one of the many tools I am picking up along the way comes from my department store of a class–Advocacy in Social Work. Taught by Prof. Katrina Balovlenkov and engaged in by many peers, we are all on a collective journey towards better advocating for the communities and individuals we serve. While some of us are in assisted living facilities, immigration services, or legal services, I work for a staffing company of Social Workers called Partnership with Children where I have the honor of advocating for the scholars at Boys Prep Bronx Charter School as their in-school social work intern.

One of these self-titled (and deservingly so) Boys Prep Scholars is also a self described “14 year-old soccer player, athlete, and leader” in his community named K (2025). Black, Haspinic, and identifying as Muslim, K is currently in seventh grade and firmly aware of the social dynamics in his community because it is predominantly made up of people like him. He is the former team captain of his soccer club before he transferred to another and has strong intellectual abilities in math and STEM subjects. K also excels in structured goal oriented environments like competitive sports or particular classroom assignments. K is the perfect scholar to take on the task of this informal interview assignment, as he is a natural leader and advocate in his community. While K believes that the environment he lives in could be changed to better celebrate his community and make room for play, his time at Boys Prep Charter could better center the junior scholars in the community and their needs. Considering K’s status as an adolescent and 7th grade scholar, inquiring from K’s mentor and teacher ‘Mr. M’ reveals a lot about the services and regulations provided at Boys Prep and how they affect the teachers' relationship with students.

Community with a K:

K hails from the Bronx community of New York where systemic barriers such as underfunded schools are pervasive alongside limited access to youth mental health resources, and socio-economic challenges impact his development–as well as many others’ upbringing. He has expressed a desire for more positive recreational opportunities and safe spaces for him and his peers to engage in constructive activities. These are my words for it, his words were incorporating a “soccer field” so that the “Boys Prep Scholars could have an official school soccer team.” (K, 2025). From Hampton and Heaven (2025) “effective interventions align with community values and address local dynamics,” highlighting a prevalent need for community centered activities. If K is the representative for the community–more soccer fields is what the community needs.

However, I encouraged K to think further about what he would change in his community where he receives support, asking him to really dream about what difference could look like. K wanted “cleaner streets” with “less violence” and more “music”. K is a prime trumpet player and I asked him to elaborate. When he expanded on “music,” it became clear this was a metaphor for more celebration and joy in his community that is sponsored by the community itself. From Coates (2014), the understanding that a focus on strengths, equity, and restorative justice is crucial for creating a more supportive environment for K, his scholar peers, and broader community is helpful when discussing celebration and authenticity.

Organizing Around K

While the scholar meets with the Social Work intern at the site and organization of Boys Prep School in the Bronx, NY, the social work intern works for Partnership with Children. K is not aware of these differences in levels of assistance that the school receives, and prompting him on what he would change about Boys Prep Charter school felt the most appropriate.

The scholar mentioned many desires for change that centered around the behaviors of his peer scholars. Wishing for more students to give adults respect, the scholar found himself forgetting about all the moments of disrespect he has dished towards adults and service providers – and the disrespect they served right back to him. Arguing that people take on their role fervently whether student or teacher, Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) words that  “Whites believe the system is fair, whereas the racially subordinate experience the unfairness of the system, leading each group to develop emotions that match their ‘perceptual segregation’” is helpful here. This particular conversation led the scholar towards discussing the difference in roles between teachers and students, and more specifically–adults and adolescents. The scholar yearns for respect from his mentors and the mentors want it reciprocated, but both of these parties are living in an educational environment structured around “whiteness” that “typically requires a binary racial construction where the Other is viewed as the opposite” (Bonilla-Silva, 2019). K is tired of teachers mistreating students; however, this maladaptive environment for education is born out of a mutual atmosphere of disrespect and no teacher should mistreat adolescent students–simply put.

Ultimately, K might want his peers to respect their teachers more and I can advocate for K around this principle, though “anything we do in community requires us to be familiar with its people, its issues, and its history (Hampton and Heaven, 2025). Adults have consistently mistreated children and those in marginalized communities, especially children, are vulnerable to adverse societal treatment that takes form in school settings. The scholar might want his peers to treat adults better, but every day K and his friends walk through metal detectors–not understanding how that programs them for the day. If racism is “embedded in the US” and the “reality of racism refers to a carceral state”–K wanting his peers to listen to his teachers makes sense when he is recognized as a leader who more often than not gets his needs met by his organization  while others fall through cracks in the system (Finn, 2021).

K Within His Community and Organization

K’s experiences within the education system highlight systemic inequalities that disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic youth. The over-reliance on disciplinary actions, including suspensions for behaviors rooted in frustration and emotional dysregulation, aligns with broader patterns of racialized discipline in schools. If “racialized emotions are central to the racial edifice of societies,” K’s experiences at Boys Prep must be understood as a microcosm of broader social structures (Bonilla-Silva, 2019).

Despite K’s wonderfully timed spiel supporting teachers by advocating that his peers try to tame their school behavior, as his Social Worker, I am firmly aware of K’s behaviors at school. Often targeted by authority figures who are perceiving and witnessing his behaviors in a way that unfairly leads him to be scrutinized differently compared to his peers, K’s intersectional identities as a black, Hispanic, Muslim youth amplifies his experiences of adversity and impacts his perception of self and trust in institutional support systems (Finn, 2021). If “engagement requires attention to the interplay of privilege and oppression,” advocating for K in his school setting necessitates the all encompassing portrait of K’s life.

Inquiring about Change from K’s Mentor ‘Mr. M’

Considering the parameters of this assignment was to ask a client about the changes they desire to see in their community of the Bronx and surrounding organization of Boys Prep, remembering that K is only a 14 year-old adolescent boy is important for considering what changes in services and regulations could be supported. With the scholar not expressing a comprehensive understanding government policy, I sought out the words of his mentor and teacher Mr. M.

K admires Mr. M because he resembles himself for his ability to engage in academic materials while also being very talented at soccer and from the Bronx. When discussing with Mr. M about the kinds of services that Boys Prep could utilize from the government, he emphasized that the school is full of energized scholars eager to learn–but eager to move their bodies more. In tangent with Abramovitz et al. (2019), establishing partnership with community organizations to create safe spaces and extracurricular opportunities for youth would be pivotal in a city metaphorized as a concrete jungle. Not a mile away is Macombs Dam Park, home of the Yankees Stadium and provider of space for youth sports teams and families. Mr. M recalls when his school had more sports and athletics for the scholars alongside electives that assisted in keeping the kids maintained and focused through the day. Whether it was the soccer team, track team, or even park clean-up teams sponsored by Boys Prep, engaging with the community in outside physical activities is something Mr. M cites as foundational for bettering scholars' relationship to school.

Addressing and advocating for K more specifically, Mr. M expressed working with school staff to implement restorative justice practices and introduce academic challenges that cater to K’s strengths (NASW, 2021). With the demographics of the school alongside the environment and atmosphere of education creating tensions that disrupt the process of learning for many students, Mr. M is yearning for a community that acknowledges how they harm its students, takes responsibility alongside efforts to repair, and attempts to heal and move forward with each student's strengths and desires centered. To provide more context, Mr. M has witnessed K struggling in the classroom and school setting because he is often trying to engage with his peers in a maladaptive way due to the educational materials not challenging him enough. Considering he was held back a year in school and repeated some materials, K’s education level can sometimes be too high for class materials that then render him disengaged, uninterested, and self motivated towards disrupting other students' academic journeys.

Not only should advocating for policies that reduce the criminalization of particular behaviors in school settings and promote culturally competent mental health be placed in focus (Butler-Mokor and Grant, 2018), but Friedman and Rios (2023) remind that “advocacy efforts aim to increase accessibility, improve service quality, and address disparities.” While Mr. M sees discipline as necessary for some scholars like K who can be “doing too much” sometimes, K is one of the many students at Boys Prep where traditional methods of learning lack the structure that keeps him engaged and interested. In turn, Mr. M believes addressing racial and cultural biases within school discipline policies (Saad, 2020) necessitates organizing around the scholar’s interests and needs for physical activity that regulates their energy and stimulating educational curricula that promote learning.

Preparing for Advocacy: K as a Metaphor Moving Forward as a Social Worker

Engaging with K through this advocacy planning assignment has deepened my understanding of the intricate layers of community, organizational, systemic, and exclusionary influences that shape his experiences. K’s story is not only a reflection of his individual journey, but also serves as a powerful symbol of the broader systemic barriers faced by many scholars at Boys Prep and in similarly marginalized communities. By listening to K’s insights and incorporating the perspectives of his mentor, Mr. M, it is evident that meaningful advocacy must involve both micro and macro approaches–fostering individual growth while challenging systemic inequities.

As a social work intern, I am learning advocacy is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a tailored, empathetic, and strategic endeavor of engagement (Finn, 2021). This assignment underscores the importance of holistic advocacy strategies that build on community strengths, promote restorative practices within organizations, and address policy-level injustices. By advocating for changes that align with the lived experiences and articulated needs of K and his peers, I am not only fulfilling my role as a social work intern, but also contributing to the larger effort of advancing equity and justice within our education systems and communities.

Moving forward necessitates prioritizing active listening, community engagement, and strategic partnerships to create environments where scholars like K are not only seen and heard–but empowered to thrive as leaders in their communities. Through this work, I aim to embody the principles of taught by Prof. Katrina Balovlenkov and the Columbia School of Social Work–advocating for immediate change and long term systemic transformation that uplifts entire communities.

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