Post 463: Different Kinds of Office Hours

Post 463: Different Kinds Of Office Hours

I use many different kinds of Office Hours. At my job, for each hour of class you teach, you need to have one hour of office hours, so if you teach 2 classes, you need to have 2 hours of office hours per week. I give my 2 hours of office hours each week through Zoom.

1. One-on-One Zoom meeting--During my one-on-one Zoom meetings, students who need help with their work schedule a Zoom session with me. We then meet one-on-one to discuss a student's grades, and students can go over their work, or ask questions about their assignments. I would use the Zoom whiteboard as the student, for instance, goes over their Essay 1 rough draft. I ask the student what his thesis statement is and we work that out, and then after we write a good thesis and outline, we then fill in the paragraphs together. I would ask the student 'What three main reasons do you have for this claim?" Then, those three reasons become the student's body paragraphs. We finish a rough draft or an outline together. After we work together, the student understands how to do a 5 paragraph essay structure.

2. One-on-One Zoom Meeting with other students who take turns. Each student takes turn to have a one-on-one meeting. Each student either waits in the waiting room, or each student watches other students correct their rough draft or watch another student create their paper from scratch on the Zoom white board and they learn from each other's mistakes.

3. Mini-Lesson Office Hour--I teach a mini=lesson based on student request of material they did not understand. For instance, I had several ESL students ask me to create a lesson on how to use the past tense in English. So, I taught a short lesson on the different past tenses in English. Then, we would have a long Q/A about these tenses. This mini lesson is a supplement to their syllabus, but is not an official assignment, just something extra students were having trouble understanding. 

4. Required Office Hour Meetings for At-risk students--If a student's average falls below 70%, students are required to attend a Zoom meeting to improve their grade. These students with low grades are usually behind in their work and require a lot of remedial work. Sometimes, these sessions are one-on-one, sometimes I teach a group of low average students.

For all my office hours, I put aside time from my week for those office hours to help students who are behind in their work or for students who are super nervous and just want to make sure they got their essay right. These super nervous students include students for whom English is not their first language or for native speakers of English who have low confidence in their writing skills. 

Many teachers do not like to have office hours because for many schools, they are not paid extra for office hours, and sometimes office hours lies outside the teaching load pay of teachings. I think students appreciate teachers who go out of their way to provide extra tutoring even if it is unpaid. After all, you will never get rich as a teacher anyway, so you might as well volunteer time to help students out!