Seriously

This an almost completely un-retouched email I received this morning from a student in my grammar class (I deleted her name to protect her anonymity - everything else is exactly as she wrote it):

Hello.
I know I said that no later than today I'll have my English book and do the assigment, but the library right now asen't recieve the books yet. I talk to the manager of the library and she said that PROBLABLY the book will get there on Friday. I hope you can understand this, and I personally am sorry for not being register. Hopefully the book will be available no later than friday, and I'll make sure to get register and do the assigment.

Thank You:
G. M.

P.S. The assigment from last week, is now in your mailbox. Sorry about the delay :)



Yikes.


This student has already missed two of the six classes available to her. There is little hope that I can teach her enough, in the three classes we have remaining to us, to get her to the level of competence sufficient to move into the next required English course.

I'm really hoping that TCC takes a long, hard look at how to best serve students like this. I'm hoping, at the end of this term, to have the opportunity to make the case that a six-class presentation on grammar and writing skills is woefully insufficient.