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Greetings,
One of the opportunities I have as Director of Outreach and Access Awareness is serving as a member of the Family Educational Concerns Committee for the Midwest Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (MASFAA). Serving as a committee member allows me to get to the heart of helping students obtain higher education. We recently held a program called the Reality Store, which gave students a chance to see what life as an adult is like. At this Reality Store, we provided approximately 250 eighth-grade students in Des Moines, Iowa with the opportunity to be 27 years old for one hour.
The students attend a middle school set in a very diverse, transient neighborhood. The school staff boasts that upward of 32 languages are spoken within the building! They have a large impoverished population and provide many services to their students such as providing healthy snacks throughout the day with a piece of fruit to take home, along with offering a clothing shop, school supplies, and coordinators who help families navigate obstacles.
As you can imagine, the students were extremely pleased with the chance to be adults for a while. We supplied them with a career, a family breakdown, and a mock checkbook with an expected monthly income. The students then visited booths where they needed to make financial choices on behalf of their family. Would they live frugally, or extravagantly? How much would they spend on entertainment, insurance, and food each month? Students learned what it takes to support various standards of living and saw how the decisions they made about higher education could affect their choice of careers in the future.
Some of my favorite comments from the students included: "The tax people just take my money! Is this for real?" "Is there a do-over station?" and "I can't believe my dad goes through this every month! This is too much stuff and very confusing. I'm tired of being that old. I just want to go back to class and stay in eighth grade forever!"
Opening the doors to education is what it's all about! Many of the students we touched did not realize they have a "choice" to further their education! They stated how special they felt that we shared this experience, and I shared with them how special I felt to have the opportunity! So give me a call or email me at outreachandaccess@glhec.org, if you'd like to learn more about hosting a Reality Store event in your area.
Until next time, have a great month!
La Toya Sykes, Director
Outreach and Access Awareness
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