The Lecturer's Re-entry Plan: Designing an Encouraging First Week of Teaching

<p>You will not catch every struggling student, and you are not expected to. You can catch most, and early. The skill is noticing signals and having a route ready when you notice them, so that acting on a signal takes five minutes rather than a decision you have to make under time pressure.</p> <h3>The signals, in order of reliability</h3> <ul> <li><strong>Attendance falls without explanation.</strong> Two consecutive absences is a signal, not a diagnosis. Contact them the same day.</li> <li><strong>Work stops arriving.</strong> A missing submission where there were two is the most reliable single indicator that something has changed. Act on it.</li> <li><strong>Quality collapses while attendance holds.</strong> Small but consistent: less complete, less effortful, less revised. Often means the workload has got away from them or something else has.</li> <li><strong>They participate but wrongly.</strong> Asked for a wrong answer is a good sign. It means they are still trying.</li> <li><strong>They stop participating.</strong> This is the late signal. Do not wait for it.</li> </ul> <h3>An escalation route that is actually used</h3> <p>Write the route down before you need it, then tell the class it exists, without naming anyone. Knowing that support exists changes behaviour before anyone uses it.</p> <table><thead><tr> <th>Trigger</th><th>What you do</th><th>Within</th><th>Who is involved</th><th>What the student gets</th> </tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td>One missed deadline</td><td>A short, friendly email naming the work and offering a specific date</td><td>24 hours</td><td>You only</td><td>A clear route back in, no penalty recorded</td></tr> <tr><td>Two missed deadlines, or 2 weeks of low attendance</td><td>A short meeting, 15 minutes, at a time they choose</td><td>48 hours</td><td>You</td><td>A written plan they wrote, plus an adjusted task</td></tr> <tr><td>A referral flag (say, another module reports concern, or a late-stage disclosure)</td><td>The institutions support route, whatever it is called: student support, wellbeing, disability, academic integrity</td><td>Same day</td><td>Support services</td><td>A named contact, a contact hour, and a framework around them</td></tr> <tr><td>Repeated non-engagement after two contacts</td><td>Formal but kind: a documented check-in and a clear statement of what happens next</td><td>7 days</td><td>You plus the year or programme lead</td><td>Clarity about the consequences, and a door still open</td></tr> <tr><td>A crisis disclosure</td><td>Do not solve it. Say you will get the right person involved today, and do it today</td><td>Same day</td><td>Support services</td><td>Immediate human contact</td></tr> </tbody></table> <blockquote><p>You are not obliged to solve a students problem. You are obliged to connect them to someone who can, on the day they tell you.</p></blockquote> <h3>The check-in email, written once and reused</h3> <p>Keep it under 120 words. Warm, specific, low-admin, and it ends with a question that is easy to answer.</p> <ul> <li>Name the observation without a judgement: I noticed you have not submitted the two problem sets since the break.</li> <li>State that you are checking in, not chasing them: I am checking in because I would rather know early.</li> <li>Give two specific options with dates: you can come to the Wednesday clinic, or I can send you the worked solution and a shorter version of the task.</li> <li>Ask one question: is there something in the course or outside it making this hard this term?</li> </ul> <p>Do not attach a formal warning to a first contact. It closes the conversation. Do not say let me know if you need any support, because nobody replies to that. Offer two concrete options and a time.</p> <h3>Building the noticing into the timetable</h3> <p>You cannot notice what you never see. Three habits:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Attendance is not optional.</strong> Take it, or use a check-in that takes eight seconds. In a 90-minute session, tally who is present while they are doing the warm-up.</li> <li><strong>Use the warm-up as a scan.</strong> Three questions a session, answered individually. Mark on a sheet in front of you. You will see who is missing, who is guessing, who is disengaged, and who got it.</li> <li><strong>Keep a one-page tracker.</strong> Name, attendance count out of, submissions out of, last contact, one note. It takes five minutes a week and it is the thing that saves a student.</li> </ul> <h3>The two-student rule</h3> <p>If two students in a group are doing all the work, the other members are not failing the group task, they are failing the course. Fix the group, not the individuals: give each member a specific deliverable with a name on it, and check the individual reflection.</p>