At the beginning of each term, I spend a few minutes with each student to gauge what there interest are, how they feel about the subject matter and so on. During the meeting I also ask if there are any challenges that they have that may impact their ability to have a sucessful term and if so, what I should know so that I may help them to succeed.

After the meeting I ask them to put in worrds a LETTER TO THEMSELVS outlining their reasons for comming this School, if there are any support systems that they would like to thank for helping them reach their goals of being here, what are the class expectations, for themselvs, their Instructor, what type of grade are they expecting, what are their attendance goals, and what do they intend to do to achieve these goals while in my class and during the term. They have to turn in this letter to me before the end of the first week of the term

After observing their first weeks habits, I will then have a discussion with them and their LETTER, to outline what they said and what they are doing. With some of the students it does make a change but with most bad Habits are hard to break. But I use the LETTER as a teaching tool to try to raise the level of expectation and accountability of each of my students.