Make appointments for students to attend extra help

I know it happened to me regularly in my first years of teaching... how many times has it happened to you?

"My daughter says you are mean and unapproachable."

And I would respond, with naivete but full intellectual honesty, "That's ridiculous - she's never once approached me outside of class.  How does she know?"

Winning an argument with a parent certainly isn't the point here... but nevertheless, I never won this argument.  Parents went away angry, complaining to my bosses.  The students who hid behind "he's mean and unapproachable" knew they had won a political victory, and became ever more hostile - even as I tried to encourage them to let me help them.

I only managed to turn the tide when I began making appointments with struggling students... and making those appointments the moment they turned in poor work.

Most of us have some time available during which we can help students outside of class.  In some schools that time is easily accessible.  For example, I'm spoiled - my school provides a 30 minute "consultation" time three days a week, time when no classes meet, but when teachers are required to be in their classrooms, available to students.  AND, my students have at least one "study hall" period, during which they are allowed and encouraged to meet with teachers.  Your school might not have such generously allotted downtime to work with students, but most teachers have some sort of time they can use - lunchtime, before or after school, etc.

I don't recommend that you wait passively for students to come to you during these extra-help times.  I also don't recommend that you make a general suggestion to a student like, "Johnny, you really should come see me during extra help time this week."  That sounds like nagging; chances are, if he shows up at all, he'll show up the last five minutes of the last extra help time this week just so he can tell his parents he listened to your suggestion.

I'd recommend you make specific appointments with students.  In the first few weeks of school, I spend way, way more time arranging these appointments than I do grading my students' work.

In large part, that's cause my "grading" of daily in- or out-of-class work is essentially a holistic slapping of a number on a page.  I only have two purposes in grading an assignment:

1. Make sure students know I'm paying some attention to the quality of their work, and
2. Find out who needs an appointment to come work with me. 

Appointments are not for people who make math errors, or who make a common error that I will address in class via a quiz or activity.  No, appointments are for those who don't follow proper methods,* or those who all made the same fundamental error because they followed a friend's advice blindly, or those who keep making the same fundamental error repeatedly on multiple assignments.

* Proper methods early in any class include starting with a fact written directly off the fact sheet I handed out.  Proper methods early in AP Physics also include free body diagrams followed by N2L equations, or kinematics charts.  

I go to great lengths to ensure that I have common time to meet with the students who performed poorly on an assignment; and to ensure that I've communicated with these students, so that they know not only that I've asked them to come work with me, but exactly when they're supposed to show up.

What does it mean, "great lengths"? I email* students appointment times.  I write names and times on the board so students are continually reminded of their appointments.  I negotiate politely and enthusiastically to reschedule the student who has a conflict with my appointment, and I go out of my way to be understanding of and care for a student who is overwhelmed with concerns beyond physics class.  But if a student passive-aggressively tries to avoid an appointment, or fails to show up without discussing with me, I escalate to a discussion with the student's advisor or parents.

* You probably want to text, or use an app like groupme.  Apparently people under age 30 don't read email anymore.  Since I'm at an isolated boarding school with a central email system which is the primary source of community information, we manage to get students to read email.  At least the subject lines, anyway.

Now, if you're going to die on the hill of get your arse in for extra help, you've gotta make the extra help worth the student's time.  The extra help can't feel like punishment, it can't be the teacher re-teaching from the front of the room, it can't be the teacher basically doing the problems for the student.  

But that's a (very important!) topic for a future post.  For now, solve your political battle by getting the students in your room.  Just that personal contact builds relationships.  Just that effort preempts a whiny argument that you would otherwise have to deal with.  

This is a LOT of work, Greg.  I know.  It nearly kills me, every fall.  One important suggestion is to stop grading anything other than monthly major tests carefully to a rubric.  Just find out who needs appointments, and make them.  Replace grading time with making-appointment time.  It's not easy.

But see, very likely, the number of students whom you need to bring in will drop as a power-law over the first months of school.  It's November - I'm seeing just a few students each consultation period now, and only one student hasn't adapted to using the methods I require (and so only one student is truly performing badly).  In early September, I had a room full of nearly 20 students every consultation period.  In December, after our first exam cycle, I'll rarely have to make an appointment with a student at all - and no one will be complaining that physics is "just too hard," nor that the teacher is unapproachable.  Because I've done the approaching for them.

This happens every year.  The brobdignagian front-end effort to make appointments is so worth it.