OUR CONCEPT
My wife Katerina and I developed the concept behind “See Your Kids in College” for our family. Our goal was to build college awareness and a desire for a college education in our kids early in their lives. Like all parents, we wanted the lives of our children to be full, healthy, and rewarding. We also knew just how much a college education would mean to them.
The statistics are really startling. Even when our national economy is at a normal level, raising a family without graduating from high school frequently requires government assistance. With just a high school diploma, it still involves a financial struggle. But with a four-year college degree, a comfortable family wage for an entire career - and with a lower risk of unemployment - is likely.
Our kids, however, didn't seem to be getting excited about college, and we thought the problem might be our approach. Like most parents, we were preaching the value of a college education the same way we preached eating broccoli, i.e. "Do it because it's good for you." This made it our idea, not theirs. We saw the error in our approach, and we guessed that the value of a college education wouldn't mean as much to our kids - it wouldn't be their idea – unless they experienced it for themselves, unless they visualized themselves in the role of college students.
So, we started experimenting. We loved going on short trips in our region, and we always went on family walks, so we started taking those walks on college campuses. We got the names of the local colleges on our routes, looked at their websites, read about their programs, printed campus maps, found their parking lots, and walked around. Well, it was a lot of fun, and it worked great. It was almost as if we had stepped onto movie sets where real live college students were modeling the success we wanted our kids to achieve.
The students, faculty, and staff were always friendly and helpful, and – more importantly – our kids got into it. We could tell by their comments that they were seeing themselves in the college world as future college students. They had learned for themselves that college sounds like work, but it looks like fun.
The statistics are really startling. Even when our national economy is at a normal level, raising a family without graduating from high school frequently requires government assistance. With just a high school diploma, it still involves a financial struggle. But with a four-year college degree, a comfortable family wage for an entire career - and with a lower risk of unemployment - is likely.
Our kids, however, didn't seem to be getting excited about college, and we thought the problem might be our approach. Like most parents, we were preaching the value of a college education the same way we preached eating broccoli, i.e. "Do it because it's good for you." This made it our idea, not theirs. We saw the error in our approach, and we guessed that the value of a college education wouldn't mean as much to our kids - it wouldn't be their idea – unless they experienced it for themselves, unless they visualized themselves in the role of college students.
So, we started experimenting. We loved going on short trips in our region, and we always went on family walks, so we started taking those walks on college campuses. We got the names of the local colleges on our routes, looked at their websites, read about their programs, printed campus maps, found their parking lots, and walked around. Well, it was a lot of fun, and it worked great. It was almost as if we had stepped onto movie sets where real live college students were modeling the success we wanted our kids to achieve.
The students, faculty, and staff were always friendly and helpful, and – more importantly – our kids got into it. We could tell by their comments that they were seeing themselves in the college world as future college students. They had learned for themselves that college sounds like work, but it looks like fun.