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Is your child or student preparing for college? This is an exciting moment for everyone involved, including parents and teachers. Setting up your student or child for college admission success is certainly a priority. And success can be easily achieved when teachers and parents work together.
No student or child is the same, and the planning teachers and parents do need to reflect that unavoidable fact. Communication, preparing for standardized tests, choosing the right colleges, and making students a part of the process are all monikers for a successful transition.
Let’s take a closer look at how teachers and parents can work together to help their student to college.
Communication is Essential for Teachers and Parents
When planning out your student or child’s road-map to college, it is essential for teachers and parents to communicate. Both parties should have an open line of communication throughout a student’s four years of high school. However, those final two years may be the most important.
Schedule a meeting and discuss GPA, areas of interest, and areas in which the student and child excel. Once teachers and parents discuss how things are going, they can approach the student as a unified support group to discuss goals for college admission success.
Parents and Teachers Can Work Together to Help Students
There is a wealth of subjects a student needs to master in order to graduate from high school. More importantly, those subjects will be on college admission standardized tests, such as the ACT and SAT.
Your student and child may not be the greatest test takers, or maybe they are weaker in some subjects. This makes the job of teachers and parents invaluable when it comes time to take the SATs.
Teachers and parents can examine a student’s academic weaknesses and develop ways to boost those areas. They will also need to create an ACT / SAT study schedule a student can feel good about, whether it is getting support in the classroom, or at home.
Student Support for Choosing the Right College is Vital
Not every student will be accepted to Yale or Harvard, despite the aspirations of teachers and parents. Some students may not have high enough ACT / SAT scores, or their GPA is slightly below college applicant requirements. These obstacles are common, and they should most certainly never serve as a college deterrent.
In fact, there are plenty of colleges ready and willing to accept nearly any kind of student. Teachers and parents can help students make realistic goals based on their academic performance in high school.
This will increase a student’s chance for college admission success. It will also keep the college application process more focused, elevating stress and anxiety of teachers, parents, and above all, students.
Teachers and Parents Need to Involve Students in the Process
In many ways, teachers and parents can become overly excited about their student and child going to college. This will often have the negative effect of leaving the child out of the process. You most certainly don’t want to simply have them fill out applications to schools they really know nothing about.
Teachers can explore college options with their students, talking about their alma maters, as well as colleges the student may be interested in. Parents can do the same but in a powerful way. They can plan trips to campuses, and even employ a bit of online research too. When students are involved in the process, they will feel positive about their decision and motivated to succeed.
It is very important for the two to work together to help students to college. The bigger the support team a child has, the higher the success. This is true not only in academics but in life. High school teachers may simply be at the head of the class for four short years, but their impact is forever. Parents have an ally when it comes to their child’s academic success, an ally essential to utilize.
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