Be Consistent About Retention Intervention Discovery
It is important to be consistent in your approach at retention intervention. Here is a starting checklist. Please add more!
1. Get to know your students. Talk to them daily.
2. Aggressively respond to student's missing any classes.
3. Give them a call.
4. Provide tutoring and support
5. Look for changes in demeanor or personality.
6. Look for changes in grade pattern.
7. Make sure the truth and the student perception of that truth is you care.
This list is a great start, Richard. I hope other course participants will contribute to it.
I agree. Being CONSISTENT in everything we do really matters.
Looking for changes in demeanor or personality is important. However, it is extremely important to train our instructors to read the early warning signs and to communicate quickly when they are noticed.
Karen, do you have a formal training program to help instructors recognize the early warning signs? If so, please provide some details – who teaches it, how often, etc. Who do they communicate with after noticing warning signs?
This is great Richard. I work in a position where I am able to discuss attendance issues with our students. Catching them out of pattern or in a rut can mean whether or not they stay in school or make it academically. We've put a new system in place this year to more heavily monitor attendance patterns and make calls to students and we've already seem improvements.
Tammy, please share more details about the system you have put into place. We're all looking for practices that have been demonstrated to work.
