Students' Sins of Omissions

Of course, students leave their names off papers.  They also choose not to write their names in their books because it might hurt the resale values, so when they lose a book there's no way people can contact them.  But here's another sin of omission:  Not filling in the blank about special needs. 

Last Friday morning, before three more classes and a dash to get ready for Pacific Grove, where we went to scatter my mother's ashes (installment 2), a student brought me a letter from a psychological counselor at the Student Health Center, who told me that this student had short-term memory loss and really needed extra help in coping with her classes.

At the beginning of the semester, I have students fill out both an information card and an attendance card and ask them to let me know under “Remarks” of any disability or anything else I should know about.  I also ask them to write a letter of introduction.  No disability or any special concern is indicated on this student's card, and her letter-of-Introduction didn’t mention anything about her surgery, hearing loss, or anything else of special concern.  In fact, it focused on her trip to Great America.   It was only after I sent her to Early Alert that I found out from her academic counselor there about hearing loss.