Michael Horn says college instructors care less about attendance than genuine engagement. They want to see early drafts, real improvement over time, and students who treat them as helpers, not judges. The point is building skills that last beyond graduation.
Michael. I hear so many complaints from college faculty members about how disengaged their students are, that they're not coming to class, that they're not showing up on time. Kind of like, you know, the common executive function skills that we hear all the time. And I always wonder, what do professors really want?
What I really want to see is engagement is real dialogue right when they're putting in, you know, I have a paper assignment. I actually don't care if the final paper is the most amazing, polished thing ever. What I'd much rather is that they send me a draft three weeks earlier that we can go back and forth on so I can coach them around it. Like, what I want to see is engagement, improvement over time, and real passion for it. And frankly, treat me like a human as well, because I'm trying to help you. The goal is not to judge you. It's to support you so that you can do better whenever you leave the institution you're enrolled at.
