By Christopher Aadland
Murphy News Service
Eric had been placed on academic probation by St. Cloud State University (SCSU) and teetered on the brink of disaster.
He has dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and Eric knew he needed help.
He turned to Groves Academy’s Post-Secondary Program to get him back on track.
Now he’s a straight A student.
Groves Post-Secondary program (GPS) was designed to help young adults who have learning or attention disorders find success in their academic and career endeavors after high school.
GPS was started in 2009 after Groves Academy — a St. Louis Park day school founded in 1972 for students in grades 1-12 who have different educational needs because of learning or attention disorders. Staff and faculty found that young adults with learning and attention disorders struggled to transition to adult life after graduating high school.
The program helps students develop skills and habits to successfully and independently navigate through their academic, career and personal lives.
Josh Tierney, co-director of the GPS program, said students often are overwhelmed with the changes they face in the adult world and struggle to manage their lives without a support structure.
Students with attention and learning disorders often can’t establish routines or understand learning processes and struggle to manage time because they spend most of their time trying to keep their head above water on a day-to-day basis. That leads to them eventually falling behind.
“After we establish a process and routine we look for ways to shorten those processes because time is your enemy in college,” Tierney said.
GPS students also need coaching and mentoring to get through the college process—signing up for classes, getting hooked up with disability services, and composing emails to professors, he said.
John Alexander, head of school at Groves Academy said, the biggest problem they see in education is neglecting the “how” of learning. He said the instructors at GPS do a great job teaching their students the process of learning.
Will Bohrnsen, co-director of GPS, agreed and said, “you can set all the goals you want, but if you haven’t developed a process of how you handle everything, like stress, writing a paper, and interpersonal communication than it’s all trivial.”
The program has students who attended Groves Academy day school, but more come from outside the Groves community.
Students mostly come from two different camps. Either they enrolled right out of high school because either the student or their parent realized the student would need additional assistance during the transition to adulthood, or students come to GPS after attempting to go through a college or university setting without any additional support—and often times those students didn’t do well, Tierney said.
The academic struggles students with learning disabilities face often impacts their lives outside of the classroom. External things like getting in a fight with a parent or breaking up with a significant other can derail a learning disabled student’s academic progress also.
“Setbacks have a ripple effect,” Bohrsen said. “Life is an extension that goes right into academics.”
And students might not recover once they get stressed out and begin to fall behind.
“Students will miss one class, then two, and then before they know it they’ve skipped a semester’s worth of classes. And then you’re out of school,” Tierney added.
Students usually get some help and support through their families or a college’s disability support office. But often that’s not enough to keep the student from struggling because those support structures act as independent “silos,” Alexander said.
But GPS uses an individualized, holistic approach with seamlessly integrated services to get students to latch on to the strategies they are taught in the program.
Students don’t just learn skills to use in a college or work setting, either. The GPS staff gets to know students on a personal level, which helps to facilitate the process. Each student has a plan of attack that is individually tailored to them.
“What makes GPS so unique is the really deep personal relationship that is established with the student and family,” Alexander said. “We really know our students and what drives them.”
And knowing the students on a personal level is important to get the students to buy into the program, Tierney added.
Eric said it was important to have someone who could relate to him on his level while treating him like an adult because his parents — who were mostly understanding —at times got frustrated with the process.
“Sometimes my dad didn’t know how to come at it,” he said. “At parent meetings sometimes he’d get frustrated and say ‘why isn’t he picking up on this?”
Despite all of the different approaches used, the end goal remains the same for everybody.
“Our goal is develop who they are as students and how they fit into society by building up self-awareness of interests, strengths and weaknesses, and planning for the future,” Alexander said.
Tierney added: “College is not the end goal. These kids need to be able to hold down a job to support them and be happy.”
GPS has a part-time career counselor who will help students with taking an inventory of their interests and guide them through a career exploration process.
Once they know what they want to pursue, students have a vast network of contacts and businesses to draw from to help them land a job related to their studies.
“Groves has a great network of people willing to help,” Tierney said.
While students learn skill and strategies to use in the classroom and out in the workforce during their time at Groves, they still might need support later on.
Students who were previously enrolled are welcome to reach out to any GPS staff for advice or counseling, even if it’s just to do mock job interviews or have their resume critiqued.
Bohrnsen said students may also desire to move away from the Twin Cities to pursue academic or career goals. If they do choose to work or go to school far away, they are invited to communicate remotely for support.
Students will then be asked to “re-tool” in the Twin Cities during the summer break by maybe taking a class at a community college and sitting down with Bohrnsen or Tierney throughout the summer to get help.
Jean Kreutter, disability services director for Hennepin Technical Colleges’ Eden Prairie campus, works closely with the GPS program. Transitioning to college is difficult because, she said, “You are your own advocate” after high school.
“The biggest difference from high school is someone is always checking up on you and making sure you’re staying organized,” she said. “GPS is aware of the unique challenges their students face. They [GPS] do a nice job of being all encompassing to offer that additional layer of support.”
While Tierney and Borshnen like to maintain a supportive environment, they’re not shy about making sure the students know the challenge they face.
The student sits down to put together a plan of attack with Bohrnsen or Tierney and is told the type of effort it’s going to take to achieve their goals.
Tierney said students are old, “it’s going to be hard work, but we’re going to be with you to support you.”
Bohrnsen said students sometimes struggle with the brutal honesty of the assessments they get, but in the end most are appreciative of the honesty.
Just because a student completed the program doesn’t mean he or she no longer will be faced with the challenges associated with a learning disability because they’re “stuck with the cards they were dealt,” Tierney said.
Bohrnsen said statistics for students with attention or learning disorders pursuing post-secondary education aren’t out there, but, he said, “we aren’t going anywhere” because more students with learning and attention disorders are attempting college.
Since he went through the program, Eric, an environmental science major at SCSU, realized GPS did more than teach him strategies to use throughout college.
“For me, it was more of a personal struggle. I had to learn how to accept myself. My dyslexia is just a little minor issue; there’s nothing wrong with me,” he said. “Life is easier now that I know myself. I found my identity at GPS.”