A bridge to education
Photo: Spanning the Gaps program transforms lives through education. Photo Christopher Boffoli.
When Tali Ajimal applied to study at Ryerson University, she was living at a shelter, working several jobs, and carrying the trauma of abuse. She didn’t get in.
It’s easy to imagine what could have happened to her. “She would have gotten a job and tried to survive,” says O’neil Edwards, program director at Spanning the Gaps – Access to Post-Secondary Education. It would have been almost impossible to find the time to upgrade her courses, and her university dream would have ended there. So Edwards picked up the phone.
Ajimal remembers that phone call well. “He said, ‘I have good news and I have bad news.’ The bad news was that I didn’t get into my program. The good news was that I qualified for a new program that I could start in September.”
Ten years ago, Ajimal joined the first cohort of Bridges to Ryerson, one of the programs offered by Spanning the Gaps, a Ryerson University initiative designed to reach out to communities that are underrepresented in the university. Founded on the belief that education can help break cycles of inter-generational poverty and social exclusion, Spanning the Gaps is one of the ways Ryerson is working with the community beyond the campus.
Each year, the Bridges to Ryerson program welcomes 70 students. On a part-time basis through Ryerson’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, the students complete three or more courses in foundational writing, reasoning and math skills they’ll need to succeed in university. Meanwhile, Edwards’s team provides full on, holistic support to help students stick to their goal.
Students are exposed to different learning strategies and, for those who have a learning disability, a specialized instructor shares tactics that have been shown to work. Often, they’re getting the one-on-one encouragement and mentorship that they didn’t receive in high school. The courses build in difficulty and intensity over the year, explains Janice Pinto, case co-ordinator for Spanning the Gaps.
“The students are put under stress so the next time they feel this, they’ll think, ‘I’ve felt this before, and I overcame this.’”
Tough Love
For Ajimal, the support was transformative. She left home after her stepfather sexually assaulted her and her mother told her she was lying. “I didn’t trust anybody,” Ajimal remembers. But the Spanning the Gaps staff kept calling Ajimal and checking in. They helped her write the letter to financial aid that explained why she didn’t have parental support, something that brought back painful, intense emotions.
They showed her “tough love,” as she described it, when she made the decision to take work shifts instead of attending her classes. “I started to trust them. I felt like they genuinely cared about my success. I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
From trauma counselling to helping with housing to addressing learning disabilities, the Bridges program takes an intense, 360-degree approach to helping students succeed. Given what their students are facing, the strategy is necessary, says Edwards. The students are often the first in their family to attend university. For many, their parents are working two jobs and the students may also be working to support younger siblings. In some cases, they have children of their own. “If you’re a single mom, your energy is going into surviving. You can’t focus on anything else,” says Edwards.
To add to the challenge, many students are also battling trauma and anxiety. “Our students exhibit a lot of the same traits as post-traumatic stress,” says Edwards.
More than half of the students have learning disabilities, which are sometimes only diagnosed after they’ve been assessed by specialized educators at Ryerson.
The Bridges program shows students early on that they’re smarter than they think, and that they can succeed in university. That confidence boost was life-changing for Daniel Mohammed. In high school his “slightly wayward” behaviour led teachers to see him as a disturbance.
Though he had always secretly dreamed of university, his marks weren’t high enough, so he went into the construction trade. But his interest in university only grew. At age 25, he heard about an information night for Spanning the Gaps, and enrolled for the next year.
“The math support was really important because I’d been out of school for so long, and, with anything, if you don’t do it for a while, you kind of lose it,” he says. “The professors were very personable. You didn’t feel apprehensive to approach them.”
For Ajimal, the critical thinking course offered by the Bridges program gave her the thinking-outside-the-box skills she needed, not only for university, but also for life. “I used to think if I tried something and it didn’t work, that was it. But that course taught me that, when you are faced with a problem, you think about it from multiple perspectives. You think of the different options you can take…if one option doesn’t work, then you try the next.”
“Incredible role models”
The Bridges support doesn’t end when students start their undergraduate degrees. Edwards notes that imposter syndrome often creeps in when students are surrounded by classmates who are more privileged. “If you’re in a place where you don’t think you’re smart enough and you don’t think you deserve to be there, all those negative inner voices are coming into your head.”
As the case co-ordinator, Pinto helps students overcome these feelings by reminding them of the strength they’ve shown in overcoming numerous obstacles. “I tell students, ‘I’m a mirror and I’m going to reflect your strengths back to you.’ We’re often our worst critic and we see our weaknesses, not our strengths,” she says.
Pinto is well aware that her students are not used to receiving help, so they’re not used to asking for it. She encourages the students to drop-in any time, and is proactive about calling them, usually once a week.
“I felt as if they would not allow me to fail. It’s not like they would bend rules or anything but they were on it. Are you okay? Is there anything we can do to help?” recalls Mohammed. When Mohammed failed to pay his tuition in time, for instance, Pinto called him. She talked through options with him, and told him about a bursary he could apply for, which ended up covering much of his tuition.
Mohammed completed his bachelor’s degree in marketing at Ryerson and is now the marketing research and analytics manager of the Women’s Executive Network, where he encourages top companies to include more women on their boards of directors. When Edwards thinks of Mohammed’s journey, he chuckles in awe. “Isn’t that just amazing? Daniel used to work in construction and now he’s working at the Women’s Executive Network. It’s absolutely awesome.”
Ajimal completed her undergraduate degree in sociology at Ryerson and is the student life and events co-ordinator with the Real Institute at Ryerson University. With her ESL students, Ajimal says, “I try to reflect as much as I can on the way Janice treated me. We want to know if there is anything personal going on, if there are any additional ways we can support them.”
Edwards sees the ripple effects of Spanning the Gaps programming, both at Ryerson and in the larger community. “We’re building a civil society. Spanning the Gaps is not just transforming the individual’s lives but the lives of their kids and maybe their friends,” he says.
Like Ajimal and Mohammed, many alumni of the program go on to support diverse voices in their workplaces and communities and they’re an asset to their university peers. “They’re incredible role models,” says Pinto. “There’s a lot of resilience and determination already built in them.”
Mature students, students who are parents, and students from marginalized communities offer points of view that their classmates might not have considered. “They contribute immensely to classroom discussions from another lens,” adds Edwards.
Education transforms lives
In an effort to ensure that more universities benefit from diverse classrooms – and more students benefit from university – Spanning the Gaps has expanded its programming over the years. Two years ago, Edwards launched the Summer Academy, in which 25 Grade 9 students are given a taste of the university experience. The students take a course designed for their age group, and are encouraged to roam the campus. After the experience, students take a survey. “I feel better about myself. I know I can get to university,” one wrote. Another said the program inspired a dream – “to be the first one in my family to go to university.”
Another program, Ryerson University Now (RUN), provides older high school students the opportunity to take an actual university credit course, which they can use toward their degree at Ryerson or elsewhere.
Kimberly Burke-Levy, program facilitator at Pathways to Education Regent Park, says the RUN program has been eye-opening for the high school students her organization supports. “Thinking of going to a post-secondary school can be daunting and intimidating,” she says. “The course allowed them to become comfortable with the environment and gave them a good understanding of what the expectation would be, of the differences between high school and university.”
Spanning the Gaps also offers programs aimed at veterans, Aboriginal students and students who are upgrading their marks through the high school system. To date, 324 Spanning the Gaps students have graduated with an undergraduate degree. They are students Edwards, Pinto and all the support staff have fought for – struggling alongside them to conquer financial, psychological and numerous other barriers. Why? Because they believe in the power of education to transform lives.
This story originally appeared in the winter 2018 edition of Ryerson University Magazine (external link) . Find out more at the magazine site.