Taking Action for Social Justice Through the FAST Program: A Memoir by a Social Worker
By Dr. Lynn McDonald, Founder of FAST, 2023
Reviewed by Pam Gates
Dr. Lynn McDonald is a Madison resident and social worker who in 1998 established a program called Families and Schools Together, or FAST. The purpose of FAST is to establish and strengthen bonds between schools and families, between parents and their children, and among the parents in the program. The long-term goal that gets most schools to undertake FAST is improving the school success of the children involved.
The FAST program has very specific requirements and procedures. For example, FAST must be undertaken as an effort of the community that is to be helped, and those who are to be helped must be represented in the planning. If the goal is to help Latino families at a school, the team planning the eight-week program must include at least one Latino person (preferably more, of course). Those who are to be “helped” must also help, part of the strengthening that is to go on: strengthening of bonds and strengthening of responsibility to oneself, to one’s children and family, to one’s community.
FAST has been expanded to 23 countries; the last project McDonald described in this memoir was in the Czech Republic. She describes visits to many of the other countries, either to help them get started with FAST or to see how they are doing, how they have adapted the FAST curriculum to their own cultures. Countries that have undertaken FAST range from Brazil, where a school serving favela (garbage dump) residents undertook the program, to Tajikistan, to Scotland — and many points in between: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, France, England, Ireland ….
FAST used to be implemented in the Madison schools, but funding has run out. The only Madison school that still has the FAST program as of the writing of this book is One City School. An effort is being made to reinstate the program in Madison schools, but $1 million has to be raised for that to happen. McDonald tells success stories from various communities, in Wisconsin and all over the world, that have implemented FAST in their schools; it is those stories that are perhaps the most interesting parts of the book, the most compelling encouragement to re-establish FAST here.
McDonald’s memoir ranges all over the place. She recollects her childhood, her marriages, her travels for FAST, and what happened in various places she visited. She has an amazing memory and has lived an amazing life within and beyond the arms of a large, close-knit family. The portrait that comes out of reading this book is of a vibrant, tireless person deeply committed to her work, to her family, and to her community – which seems to include the entire world!
But, like everyone else, McDonald had her problems. Some got her thinking, as a social worker, about solutions that she later made part of the FAST program. For example, she became a single parent when her children were very young (3 and 6), and her kids began acting out. She learned that focused, child-led play with each one of them eased the pain that they all were feeling and helped them to operate as a family again. That child-led play became an essential part of FAST years later.
McDonald was very strict on the requirements for establishing FAST at a school. She was flexible on cultural modifications, but the basic outline had to be followed. A critical FAST principle is that everyone in the participating families had to feel respected, and that they each had a voice. It was amazing what this eight-week program could and would accomplish, in very different parts of the world, using some very basic principles.
The FAST website describes the program thus: “FAST was one of the first prevention and early intervention programs to develop practical applications for adult and children’s mental health research findings. Today, our organization continues to evolve and improve our work in family engagement by integrating new scientific findings and research into our programs.” Find out more at www.familiesandschools.org. You may be inspired to add your voice to the effort to get FAST back in Madison schools.