Propelled by College Student Mentors, High School Students “Fast Forward” to College
In June, the redesigned Fast Forward Youth Program (FFYP) celebrated the wrap of its first year under a program overhaul.
FFYP, begun in 1997 by the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University, originally focused on providing central Minnesota Latino/a youth in middle and high school with homework help and mentoring. Under the new design, the program will provide college preparation guidance for students of any background who are from low-income families or are potential first-generation college students. The age requirement has also changed. Now, only high school sophomores, juniors and seniors may participate.
The change was made because FFYP staff noticed that their homework help and mentoring program did not necessarily guarantee that students would think of college as an option, or even have access to the resources they’d need to do so.
Asia Lansing participated in FFYP this past year. She'll attend the College of St. Catherine in the fall.
A group of more than 40 sophomores, juniors and seniors from St. Cloud Apollo High School, Willmar High School, Monticello High School, and the Southside Boys and Girls Club participated in the revamped FFYP this year.
The new design is already seeing results. The four seniors who took part each came from immigrant families and none of their parents went to college. This fall, two will head to four-year colleges and two will attend two-year colleges.
“It’s not that these kids couldn’t have found their way to college on their own, but with our help they can navigate a very tricky and challenging process with much more confidence and with people advocating on their behalf,” said Erin Truhler, director of FFYP.
FFYP stands apart from most college access programs by using current college students as mentors. Truhler said current college students are crucial to the program because “they can tell high school students exactly how college is.”
For Asia Lansing, FFYP was the key to her preparation. The first in her family to attend college, she will enter the College of St. Catherine this fall. “I know I’m ready to go,” said Lansing, whose younger friends now look to her for advice about their own post-secondary options.
She found the extra ACT practice particularly valuable. Without the confidence she developed for the test, “I would have been lost,” Lansing said.
Staffed by a mixture of more than 40 volunteer and work-study students, FFYP has no shortage of enthusiastic college students to present sessions on ACT preparation, the FAFSA, and college applications.
Truhler and her staff work to equip these student mentors with the tools they need to successfully impart their curriculum. After years of practice, the trickiest aspect of planning the FFYP is not what to teach, but how to teach it.
“Jazzing up the ACT is a challenge,” Truhler said. “We try to do a lot of interactive learning. It might be ACT math, but we turn it into a game and there’ll be a prize at the end.”
This attention to fun and interaction made FFYP more than just part of “the routine of school” for Lansing. “At FFYP we got to open up and actually learn. We talked about college, and we made friends.”
