Working With Your Student: Helping Them Help Themselves

This post comes from a guest blogger: Sarah Tetley, Assistant Director of Housing and Residential Life at Webster University

As parents you get the pleasures (and pains) of seeing your student go off to college. In my seven years of professional experience, I have found one of the most important things a parent can do is have an action plan about how they are going to help their student adjust to college life. Having an action plan will help you feel more comfortable during conversations, and will help you show your student that you are there for them, but that they can make solid decisions on their own.

There are many proactive efforts that can help you with conversations with your students. Here are some suggestions on how you can help your student get all the resources they need to address their issues on their own.

• Know who to Contact – Make them aware of the student and professional staff support they have to help them deal with their issues. If they are living on campus there is their Resident Assistant, the Hall Director, and even the Residential Life Office to help them through their issues or help them get connected to the right campus resource. If they are an off-campus student, the Dean's Office has staff that can help them get connected to a wide variety of campus resources. Visit this website to see several of these campus resources: http://www.webster.edu/students/
  
• Know the Policies – If you are educated on your institution's policies and procedures ahead of time, during conversations with your student you will be better equipped to articulate how the university typically handles certain situations. Many of these polices can be found on the university website. Housing and Residential Life policies are located here: http://www.webster.edu/shared/shared_reslife/documents/Handbook_FY09_policies___procedures.pdf. Your student will see that there is an appropriate way to address concerns, and the staff will appreciate your students understanding of how the process works.
• Be aware of situations in your student’s life – Keep up to date regarding issues with your student. When you know what is going on, you can direct them to the resources that are available to them to address their problem. The earlier problems are addressed the better. You don’t want an issue to evolve and come to fruition during a hard time for your student (mid-terms, finals, etc).
• The Two-Sided Coin – In every situation there are two (or more) sides to consider. Your son or daughter has a unique perspective (their own) when describing events and situations to you. A healthy level of sympathy and challenge can help you help your student see all the sides of the situation. By being supportive but also recognizing the bigger scope can help your student better articulate their issues to the staff who can help assist your student.
  

Empowering your student is one of the single most important things you can do for your student’s college experience. If they begin to address their own issues earlier they will gain a confidence that will help support them through the rest of their college career. Within these four (or more) years they are becoming the people they will be for the rest of their lives. Help them become students with their own problem-solving abilities by encouraging them to utilize the resources available to them. With your support they can continue to grow.

Free Financial Literacy Event for Students

You might want to pass along this information to your son/daughter about a great event offered by Webster University's Career Services and WebsterLEADS:

Manage Your Money (and still have a life)
Free Financial Literacy Event for college students presented by The Missouri Society of Certified Public Accountants
Wednesday, October 29
6:00-7:00pm
Sverdrup Room 101

It will provide information about budgets, methods for saving, understanding credit, and much more.

Free Pizza and Prizes!

I hope you'll pass this information along--this should be a really educational program!

Webster Alerts

If your student is not signed up for the Webster Alerts program, we strongly encourage ALL RESIDENTS to sign up for this mass notification system set up by Webster University. This system is used to alert students, faculty, and staff in the event of an on-campus emergency or school closure due to weather. Parents are also welcome to sign up.

Signup is fast and easy! Simply go to www.webster.edu/technology/websteralerts and go to the new user signup form. Individuals can use the self-service web interface to opt-in to receiving only the notifications they choose. The choice of notification methods include: SMS text messages to a cell phone, an email account, a Blackberry or text pager, a RSS feed or any combination of these.

So sign up today, and tell your son/daughter to sign up as well. This system is absolutely critical for getting the word out quickly in case of an emergency. And it's very useful for hitting snooze if school is closed because of snow.

Coming up on Fall Break

This post comes from a guest blogger: John Buck, Director of Housing and Residential Life & Associate Dean of Students at Webster University

Although it was a mere matter of weeks ago when your student arrived to Webster University, it may now feel like it was longer. Gone for many parents are the uneasy feelings of apprehension that come along with dropping your child off at college. Let’s not minimize that, though - it can be a difficult transition for parents to make, whether your student is the first or last to attend college in your family.

Fall break at Webster, though, can bring parents a new sense of excitement: a happy, 5-day homecoming to be spent with the family, providing a small glimpse back to when this sort of thing happened all of the time. Yet, it’s important to know one thing as fall break approaches: while this homecoming affords you and your family to spend quality time with your student, it may not quite be the way it always was.

Autumn brings many seasonal changes, most notably the changing colors of leaves on trees. Similarly, you will begin to notice changes in your student as well – some stark and obvious, some more subtle. Consider the following: In roughly eight short weeks, they’ve embarked on a great adventure of managing their own time, own decisions, own money, own sleep schedule, own laundry and own class attendance. In their short time here thus far, you can be assured your student has seen faces never before seen (wonder where she’s from?), participated in programs never before thought remotely interesting (throw a pie in the Dean of Student's face anyone?), and have shared stories with people from places they never been to (I have no idea where that is!). All of these things, and many more, begin to impact your student’s values, opinions and worldview.

So what does that mean for the upcoming respite called fall break? Here’s some food for thought as you prepare to welcome them home in a couple of weeks:

- Anticipate hearing them say things you never thought they’d say, but resist the urge to interpret that as a fundamental shift of the mindset of your student. It’s likely a reflection of something new and interesting they may not fully understand themselves.

- Anticipate hearing something s/he did that sounds outrageous, but resist the urge to demand a full explanation as to what in the world they were thinking when they did whatever it was they said they did. Instead, engage the conversation in a way that looks at consequences and long-term effects of decisions made now (while at the same time remembering what you were like at 18-19 years old!).

As students experience their first year of college, it can seem as if your student has one foot out the door, and they want to ignore home as they begin the journey to adulthood. It has always been the role of parents and families to make that stepping out the door possible. But in my experience, there are times when they want to make sure that home base is solid and predictable. Enjoy the time fall break affords you to visit with your student, remembering that they are probably looking forward to the visit as well. But just as you notice the leaves beginning to change in the fall, you’ll begin to also notice changes as your child visits home on breaks and describes their experience of being a college student.