Beyond the High School Diploma: Encouraging Teen Parents in their Post-Secondary Pursuits
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By Melanie Soland, University of Minnesota Student Parent HELP Center
The University of Minnesota Student Parent HELP Center’ s Teen Parent Outreach program is approaching a decade in existence. Having grown from a connection with just a couple of schools and a handful of students, the program now partners with 15 different teen parent support programs in the Twin Cities metro area and reaches over 100 teen parents annually. Over the years staff have presented to over 1,000 teen parents, teachers, and support staff. The SPHC has also provided similar outreach to other supportive programs that work with teen parents( i. e. ECFE staff, school counselors and administrators) as well as programs serving older single mothers, such as GED programs and women’ s shelters. With the shocking statistic that less than 2 % of young( under 18 years of age) teen mothers attain a college degree by age 30( Why It Matters, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy), it is essential for college personnel to reach out to these young people for the well-being and economic success of their families.
The primary purpose of Teen Parent Outreach( TPO) is to increase college attendance. This can be done by engaging with young moms and dads through informative presentations, connecting them with models of success by utilizing current student parents who were themselves young, and often teen, parents, to speak about their experiences as college students with families, and training high school staff on resources and supports available to college students with children. The current educational focus with teen parents is often simply getting them through high school, which is a challenge enough sometimes, but the reality is that most people will need training beyond high school in order to be able to make a living wage to support themselves and their families. In fact, a 2000 U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report found that a woman holding a bachelor’ s degree could expect to earn 68 % more per year than a woman holding a high school diploma. However, many teen parents are not getting the message that they are college material( and too often they are told they CANNOT go to college because they have a child). Engaging in TPO activities allows professionals to provide an honest, but hopeful and encouraging, look at the challenges and opportunities that pursuing a college degree provides young parents. Attending a 4-year college or university after high school isn’ t the right fit for everyone, so TPO allows professionals to provide the information and resources teens need to effectively access higher education at any level.
It is important to point out that any TPO program should not be used primarily as a recruitment tool for an institution or program. While SPHC staff are happy to talk about our program and what it offers, and we provide information on the University of Minnesota for those who are interested, our most important message to teen parents is that they can pursue post-secondary education somewhere! One of the most important things to remember when working with teen parents is that each student has different interests, skills, and needs, so we must use a broad scope approach to meet them where they are. Ultimately, our main purpose is to drive home the message that post-secondary education is not out of their reach simply because they have children.
In additional to the real story of a current student parent / former teen parent, there are a number of hard resources that are helpful to provide to teen parents during outreach. Some of these resources include admissions information and criteria for various vocational, two, and four-year institutions in your state, general financial aid information( FAFSA), ACT / SAT prep info, Post- Secondary Enrollment Options( PSEO), child care referral services and grants or assistance programs, affordable housing resources, and student parent support programs available in the area. In addition to these specific resources, it can also be helpful to provide tips in a variety of areas, such as welfare considerations and post-secondary education guidelines, an overview of differences between high school and college, and a compilation of“ College Survival Tips” from advisors, professionals who work with students with children, or student parents themselves.
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Melanie Soland is the Direct Services Counselor and Teen Parent Outreach Coordinator for the University of Minnesota, Student Parent HELP Center. She can be contacted at opayx002 @ umn. edu