Parental Involvement and Monitoring Professional Students
Parents give shape and life to their children. After a certain stage, they must treat their children as friends. Even family and surroundings also must adapt to the changing scenario. At this stage, parents play a vital role in taking decisions of their professional studies.
What is parental involvement?
Most children have two main educators in their lives – their parents and teachers. Parents are the prime educators until the child starts attending pre-primary or regular school. Parents remain a major influence on their children’s learning throughout school and beyond. The school and parents have crucial roles to play. There is no universal agreement on what parental involvement is, it can take many forms, from involvement in school (as a governor, helping in the classroom or during lunch breaks) through to reading to the child at home, teaching songs or nursery rhymes and assisting with the homework.
Nearly three-quarters of parents surveyed, in 2007, said that they felt that it was extremely important to help with their child’s homework. Nearly 60 per cent of parents said that they frequently helped their child with their homework (i.e. they did so ‘every time’ or ‘most times’); approximately one third did so occasionally. How often a parent helps with the homework is strongly tied to the parents of younger children. This is the story of school life of a child and parents’ help.
As time passes, the same students enter INTERMEDIATE, which is a turning point in their life. I strongly advice the parents not to influence the student on the choice of their group selection. It is not that they should leave the choice completely to the child. As they have just crossed their school life, they may not be having an understanding about the different groups and their future career. It is the duty of the parents to counsel the student about the prospects of each and every group.
In some cases, parents may not be having much knowledge to counsel the student, in such cases they may take the child to education counsellors, for proper guidance about their future career. If the student chooses as per his/her choice, the next step comes to selection of a good college.
It may be an Engineering, Medical, Degree or a Law College, 30 per cent knowledge the college will provide with the effective teaching of their faculty, experiments in the lab, guest lectures, seminars, education tours etc. Trust me 70 per cent success depends on the student’s receiving capacity, seriousness and practice towards the subject.
In modern days, only professional education is not sufficient. They should be more alert with the present scenario of the change in the market. If they want to be successful in getting a job along with the technical skills, soft skills also plays a major role. Let me first speak about Technical Skills. These technical skills, students will be learning in college. These skills once again depend on the quality of teaching and lab faculty. Before joining your child in any professional college, please do check the following things:
1) Distance of the college from home: It plays a major factor to succeed in professional career. Because if they waste time in travelling it will be a waste of time and energy
2) Quality of the College: Please do not trust a college, by what people say. Personally visit the campus, check the infrastructure, labs, quality and experience of the faculty.
3) Past achievements of the college. When you see this aspect, please be careful that some educational organisations past achievements are good, but by taking those credentials they attract the students/parents. Are they still struggling to achieve more success should be the focus of parents.
4) Management of the College.
5) Speak to the present students of the College. To know the true picture of any organisation, this is a good technique, which will always give you the right and reliable picture.
6) Pre-placement training programmes. Nowadays most of the organisations are training their students to meet the industry expectations especially in Technical, reasoning, aptitude and area of soft skills.
7) Campus recruitments. Please verify the visits of various organisations.
After checking the above list you will be joining your child to a professional college. The true turning life of a professional student starts here. Most parents take a long break after joining their child in a college and they never visit the college, to meet the principal or faculty members until the student completes studies. They don’t check out their performance too. This is a big tragedy and a serious mistake on the parent’s part. This professional life is their future. Remember this and keep a constant watch on their performance.
To settle in life, one requires Soft Skills. Soft skills are not just good communication skills. It covers personal attributes like initiative, self-confidence, adaptability, integrity, good attitude, Inter-personal skills, body language, and Time management. Most of the above soft skills, students will learn at home. Home is the best place to learn or spoil a career.
Teach your children good habits. Protect them from bad influence of friends, movies, TV, Internet, cell phones etc. All these things may be utilised in a proper way to improve knowledge. Always remember good quotations like ‘Early to bed & early to raise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’ etc. Students will be learning 50 per cent of Life knowledge, while pursuing professional studies from teachers and friends, while the other 50 per cent, they will be learning at home in a good environment. Teach them the essence of life. Parent’s role is the major role in the professional life of a student.
(The author is HOD – MBA Dept AVNIET, Ibrahimpatnam)