Check in with your students--All of your students

Photo by Lagos Techie on Unsplash

From the first day of the semester, I'm open to students about my mental health issues. This wasn't always the case, but as I write elsewhere (Depression and anxiety threatened to kill my career. So I came clean about it), I came to a point where I could no longer hide that part of myself and the decision to disclose my mental health status dramatically transformed my relationships with students.

One of the consequences of this authenticity has been that students often reach out to me about mental health issues they're struggling with. Often, this takes the form of students thanking me because it makes them feel seen and understood. However, every semester I have a host of students whose mental health takes a serious blow due to specific traumas such as the loss of a loved one, financial troubles, relationship breakups, physical health issues, family trouble, etc.

Whenever a student discloses these deeply personal issues with me, I put them on my "watch list" and set up reminders to check in on them periodically through the rest of the semester. For something like an automobile accident or an emergency trip to the hospital, I may only check in on them once or twice to be sure they're okay. For something like a family death or a mental health diagnosis, I may check in on them every week. I don't have any set process for this. I just let my intuition guide me.

Students almost always express deep gratitude when I check in on them. Sadly, most of them tell me that I'm the first professor to have ever done that, and they often struggle to articulate how much it means to them. In short, it makes a huge difference and it takes very little extra effort on my part, just a system to send me reminders. It probably takes less than 10 minutes each day.

In a real sense, then, I've already implemented this strategy. What this week's material had shown me, though, is that I can--and should--expand on these efforts. Our learning management system offers so much information about how students are doing, almost in real-time, both in aggregate and individually. I'm not really using any of that data, and that's a huge missed opportunity to connect with students.

In the immediate future, then, my plan is to learn just what information our learning management system provides, paying particular attention to diagnostics that can help me spot students who are struggling in some way.

Next, I want to develop strategies for reaching out to students based on the information provided by the learning management system. These will necessarily be targeted approaches. Students who regularly miss, say, discussion deadlines obviously require different interventions than students who are failing writing assignments.

It's hard to predict when I can bring each of these support systems online. Some may be as soon as I'm finished grading the first writing assignment next week. Others may have to wait until the spring. Whenever they come on board, though, I will continue to develop my practices organically, using my interactions with students and their feedback as my guiding star. While my focus up to now has been to offer extra support for students with mental health issues, all students should feel seen and supported. Expanding the things I'm already doing should help with that.