We have three weeks left in our semester.  Attendance in the college success course that I co- teach has fallen off.  Students have a host of life issues that are an all too common occurrence in their lives; this is the time in the semester where those things rear their unruly heads.  It’s a challenge for us, as instructors, to know how to address this problem.  This is how we handled it today.

A core goal of our class involves teaching students how to stay on course despite their complicated lives.  When we met today, we asked them to take a minute to reflect on the ways that they have gotten “off course”. To help guide their answer, we used the list of “success behaviors” that they had compiled and agreed upon at the beginning of the semester.  This list became our class contract and included things like “Come to every class”, “Get homework done on time”, “Ask for help”.  We asked them to concentrate on how they will get themselves back on course rather than focusing on the reasons why.

Students shared their answers with each other.  They got honest with themselves and with the rest of the class.  Several of them acknowledged that their attendance was poor, or that they weren’t getting assignments in on time.  These aren’t surprising responses.  What is surprising is that by not allowing them to focus on the excuses, they were able to come up with what they needed to do to get back on track.  They focused on the “now what” not the “why not”.

Now they have a few short weeks to get themselves back on course.  This doesn’t mean that it will happen for all of them, but as the saying goes “awareness is the first step” and, by the way, only one student missed class today.