First, I want to thank all of you for the comments, suggestions, advice, and support from my recent blog post: A Teacher’s Plea. I posted the link to several of my LinkedIn groups and received a great deal of feedback. You read some of the LinkedIn feedback I received here and can view my LinkedIn profile here. Since so many of you requested to hear what happened after I sent the email, I am posting it here as a follow-up blog post. Thank you again and here’s “the rest of the story”.
A few points of clarification in response of many of the LinkedIn comments:
- My students are adults and all are taking this particular class just because they “have to” – it’s part of the university’s requirements for various programs. None of them are majoring in mathematics, planning to be mathematicians or teachers, or believe that anything they are asked to do in this class will ever be useful to them now or in the future.
- Prior to trying the email intervention, I had already made use of the little influence I have over the problem student’s course grade: she routinely was penalized for not being prepared and not participating in class. My rubric for the 10 points allotted for each F2F class session divided them among categories that included: Present? Prompt? Prepared? Participated? And whether they stayed for the entire class session (e.g. did not leave early).
- Prior to trying the email intervention, I had already take the other actions suggested by many of you (spoken to her in front of the class, spoken to her privately, and directly addressed what behavior I expected and what was not acceptable)… as I mentioned in the blog, none of it had worked and, in fact, her behavior seemed to be getting worse.
- The course is only 10 weeks long and I reached my “last straw” with this student during weeks 7 & 8, which was when I wrote the email. There were only 2 sessions left and, as of this update, have met class for one of them (the last one is tonight).
Let me update you on the latest. First, I received so many email responses from my other students (remember that I sent the “performance review” email to each student in the class, not just my “problem” student). Even those students who received rather sternly-worded truth about their performance and what they needed to do to improve it seemed to really appreciate me taking the time to write them individually and prove that I’d been paying attention to them specifically with my comments. One of my favorite responses came from M, a student who had struggled at the beginning of the class but had “hung in there” and was doing very well as of the email update. Here’s the emailed “conversation”, first my email to her:
ahh M,
I am writing to update you on how I think you're doing in <class name>: .... are you ready? ..... wait, are you SURE you're ready? ..... maybe you'd better sit down first...... ok, comfortable? ........ what's that you say? ....... oh, get ON with it ... ok: You, M, are doing WONDERFULLY in this class! *smile* Seriously, I was so proud of you last night. Your team was the one in which I saw the most improvement, the most dedication, and the most effort and YOU were fully engaged with MATH. I am so proud of you. Your grade represents how much all your effort and hard work has paid off: you currently have a B in this class!!! That is SO huge a difference from where you were just 3 or 4 weeks ago. So, I just wanted to tell you that. Congratulations... keep up the good work!
Next, her reply to me:
You are by far the "Best" teacher I have had. Why???? Because from day 1, I thought OMG, "this teacher here is going to make me mad"....."she is working us to death"..."like we are online students"....!!! Then, after a couple of weeks, I was ready to throw in the towel and give up for real. Currently, I am taking 3 classes on Mon, Tues and Wed (which I aint doing no more), I work full time, I have 3 children, and I am very, very involved in church, so when you said give this class at least 4 hours extra, I was like, WTH!!! :(Then, I figured if I came to you directly and made you aware of my problem at least before I jetted. I came to you and you said to me, take your time, and just hang in there.
After confessing that I really don't like to read and realizing that I’m not going to make it in school if I don't read and engage fully in my work, then I wont make it at all, Sooooooo, I made a real "grown up" executive decision to take my time, read and focus. Now I am doing much better and it feels good to at least read up first on the chapter, so that I may be able to at least be involved and halfway know what im doing when we go over the chapter in class. I have honestly and earnestly been calling other classmates as well as putting in extra hours 10-15hrs at a time just to understand and get my work done right.
I am so very excited about your class now. Dr. Perdue, It is because of you that I am getting a little better, it is because of your pushing that made me work harder on my time management at home and at work...
Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Needless to say, I considered it a “win” that my effort to reach out to a challenging student allowed me the opportunity to give a much-needed and much-deserved pat on the back to many of my other students. There were other, equally thankful emails from those students as well, but I don’t want this post to be 100 pages long.
Finally, I am a bit sad to report that I did not receive a response (email or in person) directly from my problem student. However, I am thrilled to report that, in class last week, there was a night-and-day difference in this student’s behavior! She had her pre-class work done. She actively participated during the whole class, even volunteering to come up to the board and work some problems (a HUGE win), and there was no sign of the previous, resistant attitude that had been present and building. I am a happy teacher with only a regret that I did not think of it earlier and write the email a few weeks ago. Therefore, my evaluation of this email intervention is that it was a win-win!
Thanks again for all your comments everyone! I hope my experience and this update can help you if you ever face a similar situation.
The Solver Blog
Author: Dr. Diana S. Perdue