Monday, December 2, 2024
Framing the future: Parents use different tactics to discuss higher education
Jake Avery's daughter, Madeline, left, enrolled in CVTC's Pre-Nursing and Healthcare Academies followed by College Transfer and EMT academies. Now, at age 21, she is a firemedic in Stevens Point.
Unfortunately, parenting doesn’t come with a manual.
There’s no test to take – no license to obtain.
When it comes to setting children up for career success, sometimes it feels like a crapshoot.
Tess Lokken and Jake Avery, parents in the Chippewa Valley, have used different techniques to frame education after high school to their kiddos.
They hope with a little research and a lot of luck, their children will choose the right path for themselves, live their passions and grow in their careers.
Lokken, 42, of Eau Claire, has two sons, ages 16 and 18, who attend Memorial High School. She said that when the children were young, she and her husband talked to them about college a lot, but it was more “chit-chat.”
“The general theme was that eventually, they were going to be done with high school, and either they were going to go to college, or they were going to have to work,” Lokken said.
In the back of their heads, the Lokkens knew they would take every opportunity to set their children up for success in their careers. When Tess Lokken learned of the Business Management Academy at Chippewa Valley Technical College, where her children could take college classes during high school and earn associate degrees even before graduating from high school, “it was a no-brainer,” she said.
“It’s a couple years of college out of the way that is covered by the (school) district. They would be walking out of high school with a two-year degree,” Lokken said. “We knew it would give them that extra boost, that extra step.”
Jake Avery, 45, of rural Mondovi, said he and his wife didn’t want their daughters to decide what they wanted to do at an early age. They didn’t necessarily ask their three girls what they wanted to be when they grew up. Instead, they tried to gauge their interest in fields of work.
Madeline Avery, 21, their oldest daughter, was drawn to healthcare. At the age of 16, she enrolled in the CVTC Pre-Nursing and Healthcare Academy, followed by the College Transfer and EMT Academy. At the age of 19, she graduated with a FireMedic associate degree and with no debt from college. Madeline is now a firemedic in Stevens Point.
Jake Avery’s two younger girls are following in their big sister’s footsteps by taking high school academies with CVTC in high school.
Avery, 45, who recently paid off his own student loans from attending a four-year university, said knowledge is power.
“(High school academies) are so great. We’ve been able to leverage it to the girls’ advantage,” he said. “It’s a good lesson in accountability and accessibility.”
