One of my students hasn't been to class since groundhog day and has missed every exam and assignment. I never heard one word from this student and assumed they'd dropped out. Today I get an email telling me that this student will contact me to see how they can pass the class and that they hope I can find a way to help this student "succeed." Is any comment really necessary? (and yes, my graphic is on the left. I LIKE it on the left!)
Is enrollment for next (or summer) semester at your institution currently underway? If so, my advice for ultimate success in the class would be to start fresh, and keep up with the work next time (I'd say the first part explicitly, keep the second part implicit, or phrase it more along the lines of "you're really too far behind to complete a satisfactory [fill in final project/exercise] at this point").
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky enough to be able to give such advice without having someone intervene to ask me to help the student "succeed" *now*.
I wonder whether those who make such request realize what it implies about the quality of the education we're implying. If a student can pass after having attended/completed 50% or less of the class/its work, is the class actually worth anything?
Who's the 'they' who sent the email? The student's parents? The student's roommate? The department chair/dean?
ReplyDeleteOur "Office of Student Success" sends us these emails regularly at the end of the quarter when they are assigned students who need extra help to pass a class. The mentors there haven't sometimes been told the truth about a student's behavior (i.e. the student doesn't always let the mentor know that they have missed 18 of the last 20 classes, for example), and the mentor's job is to do what he or she can to help the student pass. So I ignore these emails and wait to hear from the student, at which point I tell them to drop the class.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we get an eager (usually new) mentor who sets up an appointment to meet with the professor and the student to see what can be done. I've now asked the mentors to email me and ask for my input before scheduling a dead-end meeting that starts with me saying, "Sally has been missing since Day 3," and the mentor responding with, "Oh, I did not know that. I guess we don't have to meet after all."
Is the "Office of Student Success" a real thing?? Being overseas for so long has made me forget all of the different support networks that are set up to keep students -- er, I mean their parents -- mollified. As far as I know, we don't even have a Dean of Students or a similar such central situation/crisis control at Across the Seas U.
DeleteEven though I appreciate the unique misery of the overeager mentor you've described, it is also a form of misery to have no central office to which academically or personally troubled students might be guided when there are legit reasons for them to be behaving erratically about coursework or whatever else.
EE: I used "office of student success" instead of the office's real name, but there may well be a real office with that name at other schools.
DeleteI also used "Office of Student Success" as its moniker, but it has a different (even hokier name) on our campus. Essentially, it's a tutoring center and mentors are assigned troubled/low-performing students and the center teaches courses on how to be a student (student success courses). Students are supposed to meet with mentors once or twice a week (or even more frequently, depending on their ability/inability to function. Sometimes these mentors provide wake-up calls or help students buy their books (whatever it takes to help them stay in college--retention, retention).
DeleteJJ: the "office of student success"
ReplyDeleteAh the dreaded "It is YOUR job to ensure they succeed" email. I get these all the time. My suggestion, respond with what I have done so far (office hours, tutoring sessions not attended, missed scheduled meetings, emails inquiring about attendance, rewrites) along with an outline regarding exactly how many classes/weeks of class the student has missed. I then follow up with "I am open to additional suggestions for how to help this student succeed". Usually since the student has not lifted one finger to help themselves silence follows.
ReplyDeleteI'm shocked you haven't been asked to give extra credit, provide more time for rewrites or turning in missing assignments, or deliver your class in an alternative format. I've had well-meaning "student success professionals" ask me to do all these things at one time or another.
DeleteThe most egregious "It's your job to help a student succeed" incident I know of happened not to me but a colleague in a STEM field at one of the other colleges in our system. She had a student whose father was dying and lived 1500 miles away. Said father needed someone to care for him and there was no one else. It was the sixth week of the term. The logical thing to do would be an all-course withdrawal, but the student didn't want to do that. She went to see the student success office, who contacted not the faculty member but the department chairperson. They negotiated that the proffie would be required to replicate her course in an online format so the student could continue, send tests to another CC out of state, and then allow the student to come back at the end of the term and do all the labs that summer. The proffie in effect was given an entirely new class prep with no compensation and no say-so in whether this was appropriate.
After she did all this, care to guess the outcome?
Here's my guess: your colleague did all of this, and the student did not access any of the materials and disappeared from the course.
DeleteAmirite? Amirite??
You obviously don't care one bit about the success of your students or you would find lots of ways to get this victim through this class. If the student had a motivated instructor who actually cares, the student would be all over this, living in the library, hanging on your every word - but your uncaring and negative attitude about knowledge, education and success has intimidated and demoralized them. Shame on you!
ReplyDeleteAnd to make matters worse, your graphic is on the left!
And you're clearly not trying hard enough. After all, if the professor tries really hard, the students will, too.
DeleteHow to Succeed in Academia Without Really Trying: the New Broadway Musical.
ReplyDeleteHow to Succeed in Academia without Really Trying: The New Mandate
DeleteIt's your job to inflate their grades!
ReplyDeleteI have a student whose planning to be overseas for "personal reasons" over 50% of the semester and wants to be able to take tests overseas. I told her unfortunately this was not a distance learning programme....
ReplyDelete