Harbinger?

[stoutfellow]

One of the most frustrating things about teaching is the number of students who don't come for help until it's too late to catch up. I try to make myself as available as possible to my students; I give them my office and home phone numbers and my e-mail address, and encourage them to call or otherwise contact me whenever they feel the need. It never seems to be enough; there're usually a number of students who'll finally come to get help with less than a month to go.

We're one week into the semester. My calculus class meets Monday and Wednesday evenings. Two students came to my office hours on Wednesday; another called me at home on Saturday, and I walked him through one of the homework problems.

Maybe, just maybe, it'll be different this term.

:crosses fingers:

Comments

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

You are *very* available to your students, allowing calls on weekends and evenings! I'm sure you must be such a good teacher and mentor.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

It helps that a) I'm a bachelor and b) I have Caller ID. Absent either of those, I'm not sure I'd let myself be so available.

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

I had a weird thing happen the other day with caller ID. The ID that popped up was Red Cross of America. I answered it, assuming it was a fundraising drive. Instead, it was a "marketing survey" group. I asked the woman if she were aware of the ID they were using. She said she'd been told that they had done some surveys earlier for Red Cross, and maybe the ID just hadn't been changed back. I wasn't interested in taking her survey, so that was the end of that.

Some time after I hung up, I realized that I *should* have gotten the phone number they were using and alerted the AG's office that someone was using the Red Cross ID to lure people *to* answer.