Q: My daughter, a rising college senior, finds volunteer tutoring very satisfying. She will graduate in January and wants to apply for a two-year stint at Teach For America. I think she should start her real career upon graduation. How can I convince her?

A: What if her real career turns out to be teaching? Or a position inspired by her Teach For America (TFA) experience? Teaching is still an appealing career choice and a great foundation for other professions. Many of the 40,000 TFA alumni now work in related fields, many in leadership positions.

Take Eddy Hernandez Perez, for instance. His assignment was teaching fifth grade in San Antonio. Through his teaching success he got to advise then-Mayor Julian Castro on education policy and helped start Leadership SAISD, a nonprofit program that works on behalf of students in the San Antonio school district. He eventually got his master's degree in education at Harvard and is set to graduate law school at the University of Texas next May. Hard to argue with that career path!

Laura Smith, a high school math teacher in Dayton, Ohio, is completing her two-year TFA commitment and weighing a third. "My degree is in accounting, and I love to teach math," she says. "One day I'd like to combine those skills in a way that uses data to help narrow the opportunity gap, one of our nation's toughest problems."

They have some advice for your daughter: Apply to TFA because of your passion. Are you doing this for students and to learn the skill of teaching? If not, then rethink your priorities.

"Don't use TFA as a break between college and grad school," says Smith. "The work is hard. You'll struggle to focus on your students if you're only passionate about studying for the LSAT."

Assess your adaptability. TFA doesn't put you where you want to go. If accepted, TFA sends you where you're needed.

Prep well to apply: While applications have dipped from the 2013 high of more than 57,000, getting in remains competitive. Prepare yourself by talking with alumni and principals in schools with TFA teachers.

"If you can't stay excited throughout the application process, decide on a different route," says Smith.

Expect tough challenges. If accepted, you'll need to prove yourself to students and colleagues. You'll get good support from TFA, but you need large stores of resilience and stamina.

And now here's some advice for you, Mom. Some form of service to the country helps young people get to know themselves and what they're made of. It helps define their professional personalities, and they learn what motivates them. They also develop insight and leadership skills. If your daughter decides to apply, be thrilled you've raised such a mature young woman.

Find TFA application deadlines at teachforamerica.org.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: Our elementary school is quashing creativity. A group of us parents thinks the lack of arts education, field trips and the like squeezes the joy out of learning. We aren't opposed to tests, and we don't want to home-school our kids; we just want a better elementary experience. How hard is it to start a charter school?

A: It's hard. That doesn't mean your group shouldn't pursue it. Just don't plan for it to open this fall. Charters are places to try out new methods. Some will succeed; others won't.

When Mary Mitchell, the late co-founder of New York City's successful Girls Prep, was asked about starting a charter, she'd advise: "Prepare for more homework than you can imagine, and be ready to jump myriad hurdles. Study the data on what makes a charter school successful long-term. Build in accountability from the start. Fill your planning group with people who will go the distance. It's a marathon."

The planning group's job is to articulate a clear vision and identify people and resources to bring your school into being. That vision should spell out the school's core beliefs and its instructional and management processes. Show the mission, costs and timeline to key parent, educator and civic constituencies. This helps refine the application and anticipate potential funders' questions. Know your state's rules, process and timeline for charter applications.

Be able to clearly define the educational need you're meeting. Florida parent Richard Busto helped lead a team that founded the successful charter Renaissance Learning Center for elementary-age students with autism spectrum disorders. They also founded the Renaissance Learning Academy, a nonprofit high school, as a transition from the Learning Center. The Learning Academy's mission was clear from the start: Help prepare students ages 14 to 21 with autism spectrum disorders for life after school.

You may not have to start a charter to get more of what you're looking for. Teachers also regret the loss of time for the arts, project-based learning and other activities that make school fun. "Most educators will welcome a parent initiative that can help add programs that motivate students and add richness to the offerings," says Tim Sullivan, the president and founder of PTOToday.com. These may be after school, on weekends or during school vacations.

"Family engagement covers a lot of ground," says Sullivan. "From helping create a new playground and ensuring a budget for field trips to working with educators to tweak a curriculum to offer more arts, STEM or other content a community wants."

Ken Robinson, Ph.D., the co-author of "Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education" (Viking, 2015) encourages parents to engage with educators.

Robinson is famous for his TED Talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" He notes that recent efforts such as the U.S. Department of Education's 2013 family engagement report, "A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family–School Partnerships," and the PTA's "National Standards for Family-School Partnerships" spell out principles that foster win-win collaborations.

Clarify your group's goals and approach the principal and other key educators in your elementary school (including the PTO or PTA leadership). What you're seeking may be within easier reach than starting a charter school from scratch.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: My eighth-grade son wants to go into a new program his high school will offer that has a technical-career focus. My husband loves the idea. My son is a B-minus student at best, but I'd still like to see him graduate from college. (His older brother dropped out.) Doesn't vocational education narrow students' options?

A: The disappearing middle class and many of the jobs that sustained it have educators and policymakers looking at this very question. Districts and states are ditching your granddad's "voc-ed" to create a more successful approach that expands students' options.

Michael J. Petrilli, president of the nonprofit education think tank the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, points out that career-technical education (CTE) is not a path away from college, but another pathway into postsecondary education. With CTE, Petrilli writes on the institute's blog, districts can create "coherent pathways, beginning in high school, into authentic technical education options at the post-secondary level. ... These arrangements not only provide access to workplaces where students can apply their skills, they also offer seamless transitions into post-secondary education, apprenticeships and employer-provided learning opportunities."

Petrilli cites the findings from a recently released new study from the institute, "Career and Technical Education in High School: Does It Improve Student Outcomes?" The study collected data on Arkansas high school students and found that "students with greater exposure to CTE are more likely to graduate, enroll in a two-year college, be employed and have higher wages."

In other words, high-quality CTE provides a route to the middle class.

What defines high quality, and what should you look for in your son's CTE program? The Association for Career and Technical Education recently published a draft framework identifying some of the characteristics of high-quality programs (for more information, go to acteonline.org):

-- Courses should align with appropriate grade, district, state or national standards to ensure competency in reading, science and math. They should also align with industry-validated technical standards.

-- Students should be able to progress seamlessly without remediation or duplication and have access throughout to career guidance.

-- Students should have multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning and get continuous feedback. There should be processes that assess program effectiveness over time.

-- To be effective, the staff must be prepared; the facilities should reflect today's workplace.

-- Teachers should use motivating techniques such as project-based learning, relevant equipment and technology, and real-world scenarios.

-- There should be a continuum that progresses from workplace tours to internships and onto apprenticeships.

-- Programs must be offered to all students and support services provided when needed. There should be no barriers to work-based learning or post-secondary credits.

-- Students should have opportunities to foster connections to professionals and activities that advance their goals.

The current way of thinking, "bachelor's degree or bust," often means "a young person drops out of college at age 20 with no post-secondary credential, no skills and no work experience, but a fair amount of debt," writes Petrilli in an article on the nonprofit Brookings Institute website. "That's a terrible way to begin adult life."

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)