Helping your teen succeed through Concurrent Enrollment. The number one way to plan for success.

I love the quote  “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." This is absolutely true when it comes to setting the course in your journey through concurrent enrollment. If you do not plan ahead, this road is much harder than it needs to be. Achieving an Associates Degree before you graduate high school already sounds like a large task to your freshman student. In order to make this process much more attainable, you need a solid plan.

I get asked all the time, how did you get your child to want to do this?  I cannot answer that by saying they really wanted to. In fact, it was absolutely the opposite. I’ve had pushback on many occasions, but as most things go when it comes to teens, you just have to remind them to stay the course and it will pay off in the end. I have heard all of the excuses.... "I am already stressed out", "I have to go to practice", "I need a social life", all of the excuses that go into doing a little bit of extra work. The generation that kids are living in now was far different than ours. We didn’t have phones and social media to waste our time on. When my teen tells me they have no time, I can simply look at their screen time report and find those few extra hours in the week that were spent mindlessly scrolling, and therefore, I can help them find the time for something far more productive than scrolling their phone.

Tips I have found to making the concurrent enrollment process easier:

◦ Make a weekly plan! I think this is the number one best tip I can give you. Every Monday morning I sit down and make a list of all of the assignments that are due that week for their community college classes. Again, "failing to plan is planning to fail". When you have a freshman in high school, unless they are unbelievably motivated and prepared, this is a habit that you as a parent will most likely need to help out with. That visual plan on what needs to be completed that week makes it so much more doable so that your team doesn’t log into their classes and find out that they have an assignment due by 10 PM that night.

◦ When I plan, my favorite thing to use is my yellow notepad. This makes it so much easier to find a sea of papers. I’m a huge fan of using my notepad for my things to do list. Really color does matter here. It doesn’t matter what particular color, however, as long as it’s different than a white piece of paper that gets lost in the mix.

◦ Here is a link to order yellow notepad :

Yellow Note Pads

I get asked quite often if these classes are super time-consuming. The very simple answer to that is no. Of course they are classes. They need time, time management, and time to study. However, being that they are college classes as opposed to high school classes, there is a key difference in timing here. Assignments are given far in advanced so you can plan your week. When you are in college, typically you have a job and you have other adult things to do and professors know that. Therefore, you can work these classes into your schedule with much more flexibility than a high school class.

I would absolutely recommend the weekly to do list. It is the number one tip I have to succeeded at concurrent enrollment. If you write down Monday through Sunday what is due, there are no panic sessions. If it’s a class such a film, I even give the amount of time that the movies will take to view as well as the length of the paper that it will require for the homework assignment. These little things don’t take much more time to write down when you’re already making your plan, however, your teen will be able to see what the workload is and allot time in their busy week for it. If you have that plan made ahead of time, it is much easier. Because as I will say one more time, if you fail to plan you plan to fail. I might’ve been there and I do know that.

Xo,

Mama