Monday, February 16, 2009
Getting Stood Up
To continue the thoughts from my last post about the frustrations that can accompany e-mail, I have a new grievance (well not exactly new, but I'm dealing with it again). I have scheduled conferences with my students for the past few days, which I love doing. I enjoy working with my students one on one and helping them with particular aspects of their writing. But the problem that I face each time I schedule conferences are the last minute e-mails saying "I'm not going to make it, can I reschedule?" This would be fine if they gave me some sort of advance notice, but the message normally pops up 5 minutes before the scheduled conference. It hasn't been a major problem this time around, but it can be, and I am annoyed beyond belief when it happens. Would they stand me up if they didn't have e-mail? I suppose it's better to know if a student is not going to show up, rather than to sit and wonder.
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In most cases, I find email a way to keep connected with students, but it can also clearly make it easier for disengaged students to remain disengaged.
ReplyDeleteLast semester, I was supposed to have a standing appointment with a student who was struggling in the class. Although he knew we had scheduled the weekly appointment to help him catch up, he regularly emailed to cancel the appointment -- nearly always right before or during the appointment.
I would always respond immediately to the email, but I suspected that he didn't really ever read my email responses. This suspicion was verified when he replied once to an email asking a question that I had answered in the email he replied to.
The student would also slip into class at the last minute and scurry away before I could catch him, so face-to-face conversation with him was nigh impossible. Although I talked with him personally about the necessity of working to catch up, email made avoidance easy, and the student didn't make it through the class.
What you describe in your posting about canceling appointments via email at the last minute resonates for me. Certainly, this doesn't always signal disengagement, but it's often one symptom of disengagement.