We’ve been running Drop-In Centre tutor training recently, and as part of the training we discussed the statistics on how students use the Centre. The focus of this post is the following graph:

The graph describes how many students visited the Centre various numbers of times across 2010.

There are many things you could notice about this graph, but one thing you might notice is that almost half of the students who use the Centre only visit once.

We all discussed the possible reasons for this, ranging from those students who only come to be reassured that they’ll be fine with their maths this year, to those who came for one specific assignment in a course like Geology, to those who didn’t like the way we helped them and never came back.

But one trainee Nick made a very important point which is the one I wanted to share with you:

Although there are many reasons why it may be true, the shocking truth is that for most students, we only get one chance to help them. Therefore, the way we treat the students and the words we use with them are important every single time because that time we talk to them may be the only time.

Suddenly our responsibility seems so much greater…