Tips on How Students Can Make the Most of Their Teachers’ Office Hours?

One of the most crucial elements of a high school student’s education is seeking help from teachers. Modern secondary education recognizes that students should not be expected to go it alone, and so every teacher is expected to make themselves available to their students for assistance. Seeking out teachers in this way can be the difference between stellar and mediocre grades. Using this time, however, is only a starting point. How can students make the most of their teachers’ office hours?

Go Often

Students should not think of office hours as an emergency resource, only to be used once every month or so when they need serious help on a paper. Make office hours a habit, block it on their calendar, and make sure they go even if only to ask a question about the previous day’s reading or lesson. Don’t confine efforts to formal office hours, either. Arrive early to class or stay a bit late, if they can, to chat. A student who seeks help often is a student more likely to receive help often.

Teachers are People, Too

Don’t confine interactions with students’ teachers just to classwork, either. Teachers have their own hobbies, special interests, trials, and personal lives. Students should show interest in them, and be genuinely curious about how their teachers are doing, as people. It’s the kind thing to do, and relationships built on mutual respect and affection are relationships built to last.

Have a Specific Plan

It is much easier to receive the help students are looking for when they ask for it. Students who simply go to their teachers and expect their teachers to deliver up all the keys to getting an A are in for a sorry surprise. Students should go to office hours armed with a series of specific questions that they need answers for and, especially in the case of papers, that they have noticed are weaknesses in their composition. This ensures that students can get some actual assistance, not unhelpful comments that still result in a B as their grade.

Use the Advice

You might be surprised how many students need this particular point. Teachers do not appreciate taking the time to give students feedback that would result in a better grade, only to see that feedback entirely ignored on students’ final submissions. If this is repeatedly the case, teachers will prove less and less willing to give such well-thought-out feedback if it is going to just be ignored. Like any resource, students need to actually use teachers’ help if they don’t want to lose it!

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Tags: Higher Education, College, College Counseling, College Consultant, College Admissions, College Applications, Academics, High School, Office Hours, Teacher Help, GPA, Study Skills, Homework Help, Writing Help, Homework Assistance, Writing Assistance