School social worker aims to right students' paths

INDIANAPOLIS — Ross Boushehry stares intently at the girl seated across from him, almost as if he is trying to decipher a code.

She's 14 years old.

She admits freely that she smokes "weed" whenever she can get it.

And her forearms are carved up by a latticework pattern of razor cuts.

They are in various stages of healing -- some scabbed over, some covered with scar tissue. In block letters, she's even carved out two words that seem to sum up how she feels about the world and herself: "F--- You."

Boushehry, a social worker at Emma Donnan Middle School, has seen a steady stream of confusion, pain and adolescent angst parade through his office this year, all of it revealed from the seat in his second-floor office where this girl now sits.

There was the man-child and the mouthy little boy -- the bully and the bullied -- whom Boushehry counseled at the same time, as if they were an embittered old married couple.

There was a frequently truant 13-year-old girl who complained of being sick. Yet, after questioning in Boushehry's hot seat, she admitted that she was really just angry at her mother for making her wear a frumpy skirt, and at the boys who have been teasing her of late.

Then there was the 14-year-old boy who had been in six schools in the past three years. After staring at the floor with his head in his hands, he declared that he had given up on school.

"There's nothing you can do," he told Boushehry.

The stories Boushehry (pronounced BOO-sherry) hears cover just about every topic in the social worker's manual -- students who need tutoring, students grieving from the loss of siblings or of parents, students who may be victims of abuse or neglect.

In one case, he talked to a girl whose parents have a history of violent fights. He asked her if, in the event things get out of hand, she knew how to call 911, and if she had an escape plan.

"We have to empower the child," he said.

Students at Emma Donnan show up for school weighed down by more than a backpack.

Sometimes their issues make them quiet and withdrawn, sometimes surly and disruptive, or even unwilling to go to class. It's Boushehry's job to peel back the layers and figure out what's keeping the child from succeeding in school.