Moore: The Teen Action and Support Center is hosting an event this Friday that provides teenagers an opportunity to learn about their options after high school. But don't expect to see a table from the University of Arkansas or Northwest Arkansas Community College.
This event is called Alternatives to College Night. Angela Smith is the director of youth empowerment programs at TASC, and Brady Herbert is the manager for youth development. Brady says the area high schools do a great job of connecting teens to colleges and universities in the area, but she saw a gap in connecting students with other options.
Working with so many teens that come from so many different backgrounds and have different goals in life and different aspirations, it helps to get them exposed to all of the things that they are wanting to pursue. So when we have teens that come in and want to learn more about entrepreneurship and the different options outside of college, I want to be able to provide those resources to them. And that made me do more research into the subject myself. And I found that there were all of these other career pathways and post-high school development options for teens that we don't really talk about or aren't really emphasized in schools right now. So we just wanted to shed some light on those options and make sure the teens know what their futures could look like.
Moore: How do you see yourself, the path that you yourself have taken, and use that as a way to mentor and to give advice to people to say, maybe my path didn't look as typical as someone else's path, and you can use that as a way to motivate and encourage and mentor people?
Yes, I just recently graduated college in 2024, so this is my first year in the workforce and I was incredibly lucky to receive a pretty good scholarship. But I still left college with debt, and I started thinking about these teens that I was working with and how much debt can cause stress, and is something in my life that I constantly am thinking about. So I wanted to have ways for these teens to feel like they had options to leave high school without debt and without incurring some of those fees over that four-year period. So whether that's through getting a certificate in high school, whether that's your associate degree or an EMT certification or welding certification, those things can really help you in the long run. And I just wanted to make sure that those teens saw their futures in a way that they could be debt free.
Moore: What sort of organizations and groups will be in attendance at this event?
We have all sorts of different programs and trade schools attending, anything from the Rogers Fire Department to a tattoo studio, all sorts of different things that you can come and see. We have several different hair salons coming. We have one that's offering free braids. You can come get your hair braided at the event. And then it's welcome to all teens. So any teen, seventh to 12th grade, can come bring their families, bring their parents, and just explore the options that they have available to them.
Moore: Do you think it's important to bring parents to an event like this, whether it's for the parents or the adults in their lives, to see that there are options? Is it perhaps empowering for the parents or the adults to be there, to see my kid’s going to be okay?
That's a great question. I honestly hadn't considered it completely from that perspective. I know that our heart in inviting the parents on this go-around comes from the fact that typically we are a teen-only space. That's something that maybe the other 364 days of the year we fight very hard to preserve—the not isolation, but just sanctity. Yes, the sanctity of that space, just for the teens. And parents are often asking when they can come wanting to be involved. I know that there is a desire just where our society's at right now for those helps and connection, or those opportunities to connect further and do things as a family.
And so this is one opportunity that, number one, we just didn't want any teens to miss out because they don't have their own license and they are going to need to get dropped off, speak with a few vendors and 30 minutes later get picked up. So we certainly wanted to increase the accessibility by making sure that that transportation barrier wouldn't be there as much as we could. And then additionally, just knowing how often we hear those requests from parents for those curated events that they can come do with the family and the need for those family times and spaces, we assessed that this would be a good one where they could come join in. They could work the circuit with their teens and maybe step into their shoes a little bit and see where their interests take them.
Moore: When you started to reach out to these people who are going to be, you know, vendors, if you will, at this event, what sort of feedback did you get from them when you said, we want to curate a list of places where teenagers can start to think about their options other than college?
From years previous, we already had a few groups that we had been working with, either that being we met them at an open house, at a school, or an event out in the community, or that they had come and talked to our teens before. So we had a good starting ground and just seeing how excited they were to get this event going. I was very excited to get started asking other people, and I was very confident that other people would also like to join. So as long as I found the right person, almost everyone I asked said yes. They were all very excited to kind of showcase their services that might not get to be showcased normally. And really just excited to start getting these teens thinking about their futures and getting them excited about what they could be doing in the future, and talking to people who are actively working in those positions and not just taking an online quiz that says you should go be a welder, but actually going and speaking to a welder, or speaking to a tattoo artist and asking, okay, what does your normal typical day look like? And getting that real feedback from an actual person, I think will be really beneficial to these teens thinking about if these career pathways might be the right fit for them.
Moore: Did you find that when you started asking organizations, or you started asking businesses to participate, that they would say, oh, you should also ask this group or, oh, you should also ask these people too, because they'd be a really good fit for it?
For sure. We definitely had that. And then even after we started promoting the event, we had to change the poster and change our listings because we had organizations reaching out to us and asking if they could also be a part of our events. So we had companies like Snelling come to us and say, we want to be a part of this event. And that's really encouraging to see the community kind of coming together and really promoting what we have to offer in Northwest Arkansas.
Moore: How do you manage the tension of you want to train and encourage teenagers to be ready for adulthood while also not losing sight of the present nature of being a kid?
That is a great question, and it certainly comes to balance, and we probably never get it exactly right. But it's one of those things that we're every day trying to do and striving for. We believe wholeheartedly in the power of young people. And so our main hope and goal that we keep in mind daily as we're curating these events and opportunities for teens is that it's being teen-led, that we're creating a space for their voice and feedback and listening to that. It probably came down to why this event was structured like this. This year we've brought some of these partners in in the past to speak to the teens and had it set up a little more of a stacked presentation style. But then, based on the feedback of the teens, we were able to learn that not every single teen particularly wants or needs to hear from every single one of those alternate options. And so that led to Brady's fantastic idea of just setting it up like a college or a career fair this year so they can come speak to who they want, leave at their own discretion.
So probably every single thing that we do every day is monitor and adjust based on the teen voice and the feedback we're receiving. And probably most importantly, it just comes down to us having the trust and the respect in their lives that those lines of communication are open, where they will tell us when we mess up. They will absolutely tell us when there's a typo on something, when they don't enjoy something, when they think it was a waste of their time. And we value that and take it to heart and do everything we can to create the opportunities that they're asking for.
Moore: Angela Smith is the director of youth empowerment programs with the Teen Action and Support Center. Brady Herbert is the manager for youth development. They both joined me last week in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio Two.
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