It’s the the second semester of distance learning, and I am beginning to read the news — students are failing, and the systems have failed them. The failing of students will have unimaginable consequences that will not only affect college eligibility, but their emotional well-being as well. I know.

My son just failed chemistry, and we are dealing with the repercussions of my failure to support him and the school’s failure to provide adequate guidance. Even after 10 weeks of paid professional tutoring, we could not pull him out of the slump.

With more than 20 years as an educator, I know there are ways, and I know we can’t give up. In another blog post, I will tackle what parents can do to support a child who is failing a class, but for now, here are my suggestions for teachers to attack the problem and save another student from failing right now.

1.  Call the parent. This seems like a no-brainer, but I encounter several teachers who do not think it is their responsibility to contact the parent.  If it’s a high school student in 11th or 12th grade, then the teacher is even less likely to reach out under the assumption that they are only “preparing them for college.”  We often forget that kids in high school are still kids and many require a direct intervention from the teacher. We also know that teachers who are willing to build relationships with parents are more likely to turn the grade around. Kids recognize that you care and that you are not afraid to use the direct line to parents to support them. These can be awkward, but necessary, conversations. Regardless of the age, parents always want to hear about their child’s progress, so reach out and have a difficult conversation. 

2. Plan for Scaffolds.  If you know that some concepts will be particularly difficult, plan to include scaffolds in your learning.  Let’s be real. Not every kid is going to get stoichiometry at the ripe age of 15. Identify additional media that students can reference when they get stuck. The last thing we want is for students to head to youtube to search for a topic and learn something that was not intended.  It is up to the teacher to find and vet the materials, and point students to the section they want their students to watch (i.e., watch at 1:15-1:30). Most students will search google and automatically click on the first video they see. While the first video might be helpful, it may not align with the course outcomes, and you may find yourself reteaching a concept that students inadvertently acquired. Undoing student learning is the worst. 

3. Record and upload your live sessions.  The most significant benefit of pandemic teaching is the ability to record your sessions for students to review later. Unfortunately, I’ve heard too many excuses about why some teachers won’t do this — privacy issues, students should listen and take notes the first time, or students won’t pay attention if they know I am recording the lesson. I’m sure there’s more, but the real reason is fear.  Teachers fear recording their lessons and it being cut into a Tiktok or worse – a meme. Okay, that really doesn’t happen (or does it?) But fear is the real reason.  Recording your lessons opens teachers up to feedback and vulnerability.  Before the pandemic, they could close the door. Now, once recorded, it is out for anyone to see, including administrators.  While this could be an entire blog post in itself (note to self), let’s think about the benefits — recorded lessons support student learning.  When I first started teaching online, we called this “The power of the pause.”  We are essentially giving students the ability to go back and review the lesson, especially if they tuned out the first time.  If a student is failing, consider redirecting students to the guided notes with additional questions and asking them to review the video.  

4.  Include guided notes.  For some students, guided notes help them stay focused.  There can be several distractions at home, and listening to your teacher on a zoom call can be difficult.  Providing students with guided notes can help them isolate the information, pull out key concepts, or encourage them to sketch essential ideas.  Cult of Pedagogy offers an excellent resource on notetaking.  Guided notes can later be used as a study guide or revisited during group workshops, pretests, or during a live session replay.  Guided notes help failing students revisit the content in a manageable format.  When left to students, notetaking can look like scribble scrabble, and reviewing unclear notes fosters poor study habits that lead to failing tests.  Let’s set students up for success by taking the guess out of organizing notes. 

5. Re-evaluate how Peardeck is used to check for understanding. Many teachers are indeed using Peardeck, but if students are struggling or don’t respond to your Peardeck questions, reach out to the student privately.  You may find that they do not want to be singled out for responding incorrectly.  I’ve heard enough live sessions in which a teacher says, “John, we’re waiting for your response before we move on.” Or worse, “John, you got the answer wrong. Go back and check your work.” I implore teachers to use a private chat.  A personal check-in will go a lot farther than a whole class cold call. 

6. Schedule a personal check-in. Scheduling personal time with your students is the single best thing you can do for all students, but even more so with failing students.  Failing students often think their teachers don’t care.  What better way to prove them wrong than to schedule a 15-minute call with them to check in on their life beyond the classroom?  During this call, you might also find the root cause of their failure — a sick family member, an unexpected unemployed parent, taking care of siblings, or simply not understanding why the heck your content is relevant to them.  This newfound information could give you precisely what you need to provide a more personalized approach.  

7. Require failing students to attend support workshops.  When kids (and, let’s face it,  most adults) see “optional,” they automatically opt-out. Students need to experience the benefit and sometimes that needs to be forced.  After X amount of workshops, make it optional. By that time, students can see if it’s worth their time.  

8. Better yet, use pretests to enforce additional workshops or practice.  If a student scores below 70% on a pre-test, then it’s clear they need extra support.  Also, pretests help to ensure that your assessments align with your instruction. Many teachers create assessments after teaching the content and then throw in questions that they didn’t explicitly teach.  A pretest will help you weed out the confusing questions.  Everything you teach should be directly related to what was taught, right down to how you pose the questions.  I know this might be controversial, but I believe that if you are going to offer multiple representations of the same question, then all possible representations should have been addressed in the learning.  At that point, it’s okay to pose questions in another way. Once you receive the pretest data, reach out to parents whose child meets a minimum score to let them know you are holding mandatory workshops or office hours to support their child.  I dare you to show me any parent who wouldn’t support you 100%.  

9. Set up productive study sessions for small groups.  Students can learn a lot from each other, but the worst thing we can do is to simply send students off in the hopes that they will work productively toward a common goal.  Productive study sessions are ones in which the teacher has prepared a document with key concepts, formulas, or any pertinent information along with a purposeful task.  Consider what students can purposefully do in their small groups.  Can they work through problems in which each person completes a portion of the solution? Can they discuss scenarios?  Can they evaluate essays using a rubric checklist?  Can they use gameplay with flashcards?  Ultimately, we need to teach students how to study. Providing students with a task gives them purpose and creates a safe, collaborative environment to be vulnerable to all they do not understand.  

10. Don’t give up. When I interviewed teachers, we posed a simple scenario to determine a teacher’s perseverance:  What would you do if a student is failing your class?  Job candidates began with typical responses like “talk to the student.”  But then we went further.  Then what would you do? Response. Then what?  Response.  What else? And what if that doesn’t work? We would push the candidate at least ten times.  Some would make it, and others, after three responses, would say, “Well, I guess I would just assume the student wasn’t going to pass.”  BUZZ.  Wrong Answer.  As soon as they said this, we knew the type of teacher they would be, and chances are, they didn’t get the job.  This scenario’s point is to prove there is always a way, and it’s up to teachers to find it.

As a new semester begins, I am trying my best to reconcile a pandemic with my child’s failing grade. Could I have done more? The answer is yes, and that is the failure I live with as a pandemic parent. However, now is not the time to place blame on myself or the teachers. Now is the time for solutions, and I hope these 10 strategies are a good start.