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July 14, 2011
Greetings Fellow School Social Workers!
I am excited to be a member and leader of such a
wonderful organization. I have been a School
Social Worker and SSWAG member for 12 years now and
I continue to be amazed by all the wonderful and
creative things we do to help children across the
state.
If you have not reviewed SSWAG’s strategic plan,
please look under “About Us” on the website and read
what we are working to do. I want to highlight
a few things that I will be focusing on this year.
First, we want to increase our state membership.
There are over 500 School Social Workers in the
state of Georgia and I want them all to be members!
To encourage districts to promote membership, we are
hosting a competition between districts. The
district with the highest percentage of members out
of possible members will be awarded the “Membership
Counts” award so let the competition begin! We
are only as strong as our membership and think what
a statement it would make for our legislative
efforts if we could say 100% of School Social
Workers across the state are SSWAG members!
The second priority for me this year is to work with
the Department of Education on revising our annual
report. There is a SSWAG committee who will be
working on this and we will keep you posted.
The third priority is our communication. We
want to have as much dialogue as possible with our
members about what you need and how we can best
support you. We plan to utilize the website
more and you can now follow us on facebook (courtesy
of Karin White – District 9)!
And finally, my last priority this year is our new
Mentor Committee. The goal of the Mentor
Committee will be to provide mentors to new or
fairly new School Social Workers to offer support
and guidance. We also hope to have a component
to help those interested in becoming licensed find
supervision within SSWAG. Christa
Kirksey-Huggins has volunteered to head this
committee up and will let you know more in the
upcoming months.
We have two great conferences being planned now.
The fall conference will be October 19-21 at the
beautiful Brasstown Valley Resort and Spa. The
spring conference is sight is still being negotiated
but we will be celebrating SSWAG’s 65 th
Anniversary so I’m sure it will be fabulous.
Look for more information under Events.
I am looking forward to a wonderful and productive
year and I hope you will help me by renewing your
commitment to School Social Workers across the state
and SSWAG!
Amanda Schutz
SSWAG President
2011 Elsie Nesbit
Trailblazer Award
Nora Aaron
Kristin Hanfland
2011 Friend of
Children Award
Susan R. Fort
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