From a young age, she has always aspired to be a social worker, and that passion has remained with her. Being a social worker has always been her lifelong dream. She has worked with children her whole life and once she went to college she started to pursue her dream and be a social worker. Michele Ratini, a crucial member of the West Leyden High School community, works as a social worker.  With a career that spans over 26 years, she has established herself as a dedicated social worker.

Aside from Ratini being a social worker she also is the club sponsor for Operation Snowball. “Okay, so suicide prevention is a completely different animal. I should n’t know if animal is the right word, but it’s a completely different beast subject. It’s a completely different subject. I think that with regards to helping students develop healthier coping strategies, I think the way that snowball is looking to approach it is through.” When it comes to working with kids, personal experiences can make a huge difference. For instance, Ratini once said, I’m working with kids. What I can say is that having my own kids changed my mindset in a more positive way. I think it rounded out my understanding and it expanded my patience a little bit more.”

OS: Ratini has worked with countless students with anything they have ever needed. Ratini is the club sponsor for Operation Snowball. “Well, I have always, I realized when I got older that I have an ability to hear, to look at difficulties of the human condition and untangle it. I have an ability to recognize not just what the problem is, but also kind of be able to unravel and figure out how to manage it, and that’s just been something I’ve always been good at.” Operation Snowball is always talking about how we can better support our communities in drug prevention and education, a powerful insight was shared that speaks to the heart of community-driven initiatives. Ratini noted: “But Well, yeah, I mean everybody, I think, as us on the overarching thing that they learned was, I mean, we go there to learn about community initiatives, how to organize, how to leverage relationships, how to how to be responsive to the needs of the community in house and school, with regards to not just prevention, but as well on how to understand, how to create, creatively approach, some of the problems that that we see in our immediate community.”

For anybody who is struggling with mental health and doesn’t know how to get help or how to reach out for help Ratini says, “I would connect them to the Leyden Social Work website, the West Leyden Social Work website, where there’s resources to get help. I would say that you live in a day and age where you could just Google, and you can ask it. You can use chat gpt and kind of say, I’m struggling with my mental health, what do you suggest? And it will spit out immediate responses to it. I think there’s also community resources, there’s hotlines, there’s text hotlines, the resources and the ability to connect with support is a lot greater than I think it’s been in a long time.”