3 Tips for Supporting Seniors Transitioning to College
Casey Partridge is The Director of Sooner Success at the University of Oklahoma and a first-generation college student, and he spoke about engaging students in transitional times during the webinar Lisa Brady Gill moderated last week. He offered some information that you should keep in mind for your college-bound seniors as well as three tips for supporting them during the transition.
If your school has offered a pass/fail grading option, encourage your students to go with that rather than risk hurting their GPA. Many colleges right now, including OU, are trying to get their enrollment numbers up by looking at students’ previous academic records rather than how they are performing right now.
Advising and orientation are both being done online, often through Zoom. Students who don’t have internet access may need extra help finding a way to contact their school, and every student should have a connector at the college they’ll be attending — their academic advisor is a good starting point.
The approach Casey’s team uses with their freshman students is built around three simple concepts, but they have a great impact on a student’s ability to be successful. In this time of uncertainty and fear, these three key aspects are even more important and will let you remind your students who they are and that they have the skills they need to reach their goals.
1. Help Students by Reducing Stress
An important skill Casey’s team has is the ability to help students reduce their stress, especially right now when there is a heightened sense of needing to be engaged listeners. A natural reaction is to push information and resources to them, and a lot of that is needed and good, but first make sure to stop and ask what they need.
Find a way to listen to where your students are and think about how to meet them there. You need to validate their feelings and what they’re going through, and let them know it’s okay to experience these things.
Casey recommends asking your students how you can best reach them, which is something his team has been doing with their freshman as they wind down their first year. This can be over phone, email, Zoom, Google Voice, or text. Wherever it is, meet them there and listen to where their stress is coming from rather than assuming you know.
2. Help Students by Encouraging and Empowering Them
Every time a student leaves you, even if nothing else is accomplished, they should feel encouraged. This skill is built on powerful open-ended questions that help students understand themselves more intricately and give them a sense of empowerment. You don’t have to tell them what to do. Instead, ask them what they have already done in their life to overcome other obstacles.
Your students have accomplished great things. Many GEAR UP students who are on the path to college might not have been previously, and many of them have overcome adversity just to be where they are today. Asking them about a time they succeeded reminds them that the characteristics that were a part of that can still be relied on today.
Some students are uncertain and questioning the goals they’ve had for a long time. Ask them why they wanted these goals in the first place and why these goals are important to them. Remind them of their “why” for setting these goals. Remind them who they are and that they have what it takes to overcome obstacles.
Casey’s team has found that the best way to provide this encouragement is to reach out to students with short informational video content, which they often get thousands of hits on. Another idea is sending these videos with a quick message such as “Hey, I’m thinking of you and I love the message here, what do you think?”
3. Help Students by Creating a Plan to be Better Tomorrow Than Today
The global pandemic means that a lot of the news students read is on a massive scale, and that can be overwhelming. Help them narrow it down to an individual situation. Remind them where they are now and what they can do for themselves to be better tomorrow. Make sure they know one or two actions they can take this week to get them closer to where they want to be.
You are copilots in your students’ planes, but let them know you’ll hold on as much as you need to, especially right now. You’re being called to hold on a little bit more, but ultimately is for your students to fly this plane by themselves — and they can! Think about what you can do to help them understand some small incremental actions they can take to get there, day by day and week by week.
