Name: Maddie Schwartz

Social Justice Group: Mental Health in Teens

Date of Fieldwork: January 20, 2023

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s): Ellen Kelty, Director of Mental Health and Student Safety, Denver, Colorado

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?

On January 20th, our group got the privelege to meet Ellen over Zoom and talk to her about her job, resources that are avalible to her students and students everywhere, what she does for her job, her passion for it, and more.

Ellen has been a school psychologist for over 20 years, but now actually does more work actually managing mental health programs at schools, as now she is the director of Mental Health and Student Safety.

One of the main takeaways I got from this fieldwork was just finding out how many different things a school psychologist actually does. Ellen told us that just some of the things she’s done are testing and evaluations for children, helped kids come up with plans to be more successful in school and regulate themselves, and of course, has just listened to kids talk and been there for them.

She also left us with some organization recommendations which we will be sure to contact!