Gil, it seems as if you put an incredible amount of effort into your teaching. When I was a professor, I too encouraged my students to call me at home, although I did put a 2200 hours limit since I had small children at home at the time. "Get out of jail free" card is also a great option as long as you have plenty of assignments throughout the class that one assignment drop doesn't affect the final learning outcomes that you want the student to ultimately take from the class. When you come across a student who just doesn't understand what "being a student" really means, what do you do? I could see having one of these kinds of students in every class - have you run into this enough times that you have developed a good way to effectively coach these students?