I am teaching an honors class for seniors (at a very good university, top 5 in my field). Most students are fantastic. They are very interested, they often surprise me with insights in class, and the class is very lively not because I am a particularly engaging lecturer but because the students love what they are learning. They thrive on painful homework sets and difficult homeworks/exams. They can't get enough of whatever I throw in their way. In all, they are a joy to teach.
Unfortunately, in a class of such strong students, the weak student sticks out like a sore thumb. One student in particular is doing extremely poorly. Generally homework sets are well done since students more or less help each other out, but in quizzes and exams this student has scored failing grades (10-20% range). But because of her good performance in the homework sets, I don't think that she realizes that she is a very weak student.
This in itself is fine, because not everyone can be strong in everything. But what worries me is the subconscious that manifests in her behavior.
For example, she comes to my office hour (she is the only one that comes regularly; I hold three hours' office hour a week, and she is there all three hours. The others come and stay for no longer than 10-15 minutes).
She tells me that a particular problem is not doable because it was not covered in class (it was done and I point it out in her notes that she took in class). Her favorite complaint is that a problem seems unapproachable unless we know some advanced topic (that she gleaned from the textbook) that will not be covered for a few more weeks. I ask her to prove it using the advanced topic and she still cannot do it; furthermore, the problems are most definitely doable with what I have covered in class.
When I do not post the solutions immediately after the homework sets are due (because as a professor, I happen to have things other than teach this course), I expect an email in my inbox asking where the solution set is.
When she does not understand a concept, she bring her notes and says that the class was unclear and that I should explain it again to her (I receive great evaluations, and I am in particular noted for the clarity of my lectures).
The thing that I am concerned about is that less than a month into the semester, she is already showing signs of blaming her problems on me. I know her very well academically, since we have been spending three hours a week going over the course material. There is no chance that she will pass this course (as she has no idea how to think for herself; her idea of academic improvement is to consistently show up to my office hour and listen to me talk), and I am worried about her creating problems for me. She is a transfer student from a community college, and no one else has any data on her as this is her first semester. Furthermore, as a woman, I often find that students tend to demand things from me, and I am seeing signs of this (asking for more office hours in a completely entitled way, etc.)
It would honestly improve the quality of my life so much if I could somehow find a way to deal with her. What can I do to 1) try to get her to drop my course, and 2) cover my ass for the administrative hell she might raise, if she fails my course?
As a disclaimer, I have had weak students before, and I was not this worried about them, because they acknowledged that they were weak, and they actually put work into trying to learn the course. This one, however, seems more into thinking about what things are in her way of learning that I am not doing.
EDIT: Thank you for your sympathy and many insights to how I might deal with this issue. It took me a long time to read everything, but I have decided to do the following:
Take a harder line of approach with how she interacts with me in office hours; I will guide her to ask very specific questions, instead of the generic "I didn't get this part of the lecture" and if she protests, I will voice my concerns over her poor performance in quizzes. But I do think that she is not doing anything wrong by taking up all my time. I just have to be more firm in choosing which questions to answer and which not to answer.
Document her questions and my answers/approaches to her questions.
But since she has been scoring nearly perfect scores in her homework sets (although she is failing her quizzes badly), I do not think that I will suggest that she drops my course for now. The add/drop deadline passed about a week ago, so there is no alternative for her anyway, and I will suggest that she drops the course after the midterm. Or maybe some miracle will happen and she will actually do well!
Answer
Some short-ish advice:
First: Realize that you can't save everyone. I'm on the other end of this, teaching at the community college, which is something like an academic M.A.S.H. unit. Some people you have to realize are, most unfortunately, unsaveable ("black-flagged" in medic parlance). The weakest students are, oddly, the ones most resistant to suggestions about switching to easier courses (I tried this twice this semester to no avail: see Dunning-Kruger effect).
Second: Set boundaries. It's probably an abuse of your office hours that this one student is taking up all of them. Proper usage is, as you say, 10-15 min for a particular question or issue. For a particularly weak student like this I may say, "Let's say we have 30 minutes for this." Require that she ask about a particular homework exercise that she can show prior work for. Do not just regurgitate the lecture wholesale.
Third: One student failing should not cause administrative hell. Students will fail and this is a normal part of the institution's function. If she does complain then (at least where I am) the instructor is given the benefit of the doubt. The majority of the time, a student in this situation has a record of failing other STEM courses. (If it does cause hell, then you have my enormous condolences for a degenerate administrative system.)
Fourth: It doesn't hurt to document what you efficiently can. I keep a digital gradebook via the learning management system; occasionally a student complains, my department ask for documentation, I turn that over (showing multiple documented failures), and that's the last I hear of it. After grading, I actually run all my tests through a bulk digital scanner so I keep a copy before I hand them back (in fact: I make all my tests on one sheet of paper to assist this; takes about 1 minute at the school's feed scanner). This actually hasn't been seen by anyone else in the few years I've been doing it, but it's there if I do need it. Also it's good for me to reference as documentation and examples in the future.
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