Inspirational Teaching

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Inspirational Teaching

• Wynne R. Waugaman, CRNA, Ph.D.
• Associate Professor and Interim Chair
• Department of Nursing
• University of Southern California

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What is teaching?

• The intentional act of creating conditions that
  can help students learn a great deal or keep them
  from learning at all!

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Teachers Roles

• Mentor
• Listener
• Detective
• Scholar
• Liberator
• Exciter
• Community-builder
• Explorer
• Facilitator

• Philosopher
• Assessor
• Helper
• Encourager
• Coach
• Counselor
• Advisor
• Learner
• Humorist

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Students who learn are the finest fruit of
teachers who teach.
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What inspired you to become a teacher?

• I wanted to emulate a mentor/teacher whom I
  admired!
• I could do a better job than those who taught me!
• Other reasons????

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Grad Student Teaching Interest

• Teaching is not only for the student the teacher
  benefits from the students questions and
  perspectives.
• Teaching helps to propagate the field!

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Grad Student Teaching Interest

• I will never forget how tough it is to be a
  student and will carry these memories into my
  teaching
• The best way to know something is to be able to
  teach it.
• Teaching motivates one to keep updated.

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Grad Student Teaching Interest

• Being a student has made me realize once again
  how much fun and how stimulating learning can be.
• I would like to give back to the profession.

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Grad Student Teaching Interest

• Teaching helps to carry on the tradition of the
  educational process I experienced here at USC.

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The Power of Mentors

• To awaken a truth within us.
• Mentoring is a mutuality between the right
  student and the right teacher.

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Mentors and apprentices are partners in an
ancient human dance, and one of teachings great
rewards is the daily chance it gives us to get
back on the dance floor.P.J. Palmer (1998). The
courage to teach, p. 24.
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We must enter, not evade, the tangles of teaching!
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Sources of the Tangles of Teaching

• The subjects comprising nursing practice are as
  large and complex as life, so our knowledge of
  them is always flawed and partial.
• The students we teach are larger than life and
  even more complex requiring a pedagogical style
  fusing Freud and King Solomon.

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Sources of the Tangles of Teaching

• We teach who we are!
• For better or worse, teaching emerges from our
  inner self.
• Teaching holds a mirror to the soul!
• Knowing oneself is as crucial to good teaching as
  knowing our students and our subject matter.

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Teaching can be a fearful enterprise!

• Fear of students, fear of faculty colleagues, and
  fear of administrators.
• Academe offers many ways to protect ourselves
  from the live encounter (a sequence of fears
  which begins in the fear of diversity).
• Faculty can hide behind their podiums, their
  credentials, their power, and their academic
  specialties!

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We fear change!
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Culture of Disconnection

• Undermines teaching and makes learning be driven
  partly by fear.
• Our Western commitment to think in polarities is
  a thought form that elevates disconnection into
  an intellectual virtue.

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The Student from Hell!

• Disconnection occurs when the students fear
  shuts down the capacity for connectedness.
• Describe a student who fits this description!

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The Results of Disconnection
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Broken Paradoxes of Education

• We separate theory from practice. Result
  theories that have little to do with life and
  practice that is uninformed by understanding.
• We separate teaching from learning. Result
  teachers who talk but do not listen and students
  who listen but do not talk.

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Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique
good teaching comes from the identity and
integrity of the teacher.P.J. Palmer (1998). The
courage to teach, p. 10.
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The Good News

• We no longer need suffer the boredom felt when
  teaching is approached as a question of how to
  do it.
• We no longer have to suffer the pain of having
  our particular teaching style forced into the
  current teaching method du jour (e.g. Web
  courses, Power Point Presentations, etc.)

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The Bad News

• If we want to grow as teachers, we must risk
  doing something alien to the academic culture
  we must talk to each other about our self, our
  identity, our inner lives.
• We must experiment, stay open to new ideas rather
  than protect ourselves behind the old and
  familiar.

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Teaching Qualities Valued

• Openness and genuine caring for all.
• Unequivocal fairness.
• One who is not afraid to say when they do not
  know the answer.
• Organized and prepared.
• Subject expert.

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Teaching Qualities Valued

• Consistency and patience.
• The ability to trust the student and give up
  control.
• Approachability.
• Open to discussion.
• Sense of humor.

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Teaching Qualities Valued

• Enthusiasm and joy for the subject matter.
• Take an extremely difficult concept and simplify
  it with examples, drawings, etc.
• Always questioning authority should not
  intimidate.

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Teaching Qualities Valued

• Willing to teach clinically without giving the
  student the sense of burden of having a
  student.
• Faculty are only as good as the weakest link.
  Teach us to be the best.

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Characteristics of Good Teachers

• A strong sense of personal identity infuses their
  work.
• Encouragement
• Enthusiasm
• Confidence
• Good listener
• Sharing personal experiences, especially clinical
  examples

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Incorporating real-life experiences into
academic learning

• Clinical practicum experiences
• Professional/organizational experiences
• Community experiences
• Others??

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Characteristics of Good Teachers

• Possess a capacity for connectedness they weave
  a complex web of connections among themselves,
  their subject, and their students enabling the
  students to weave their own fabric from what
  theyve received.
• Keep their hearts open to their students even in
  difficult times.

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Teaching that Inspires/Motivates

• Positive reinforcement builds confidence.
• The enthusiasm of the instructor and the
  applicability of information.

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Teaching that Inspires/Motivates

• Sharing their own personal experiences during
  their time as a RN or student which reveals
  humanism.
• Seeing our alumni as teachers and knowing they
  are still thirsting for professional knowledge.

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Teaching that Inspires/Motivates

• When the clinical instructor demands student
  responsibility and/or accountability in the
  clinical setting.
• Involving the class in discussion and problem
  solving

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Sex up Your Teaching

• Encourage creativity
• Encourage the search for more than one right
  answer
• Ask questions that solicit plural answers
• Encourage dialogue
• Ask what if questions
• Get in touch with the art of nursing

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Artist vs. Judge

• Encourage students to have their artist do its
  job before bringing in their judge.

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Sex up Your Teaching

• Encourage creativity
• Encourage the search for more than one right
  answer
• Ask questions that solicit plural answers
• Encourage dialogue
• Ask what if questions
• Get in touch with the art of nursing

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If you give students conflicting
interpretations, they get to use their big,
bright brainsHave faith in the students
ability to think W. Bateman, (1990), Open to
question The art of teaching and learning by
inquiry, p.10.
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Sex up Your Teaching

• Encourage creativity
• Encourage the search for more than one
  right answer
• Ask questions that solicit plural answers
• Encourage dialogue
• Ask what if questions
• Get in touch with the art of nursing

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Vignettes Clinical or didactic experiences
where a teacher had a significant impact upon you
as the student.They can be negative or positive.
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Inspirational teaching requires the teacher to
bring his/her gifts to the classroom or clinical
setting!
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A Teachers Gifts

• A capacity to combine structure with flexibility
  in both planning and leading each class or
  clinical experience.
• A thorough knowledge of the material and a
  commitment to facilitating mastery among students.

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A Teachers Gifts

• Make curricular decisions that are guided by the
  goal of student mastery and achievement rather
  than an effort to cover the content.
• A desire to help students build a bridge between
  the academic text and their own lives by
  providing a strategic approach.

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A Teachers Gifts

• Set the tone which explicitly and
  self-consciously stresses values of unanxious
  expectation (I wont threaten you but I expect
  much of you.), of trust (unless abused), and of
  decency (the values of fairness, generosity and
  tolerance).

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A Teachers Gifts

• An ability to personalize teaching and learning
  to the maximum it is feasible.
• A respect for my students stories that is no
  more or less than my respect for the scholarly
  readings I assign them.

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A Teachers Gifts

• An aptitude for asking good questions and
  listening carefully to my students responses,
  not only to what they say, but also to what they
  leave unsaid.
• An ability to see my students lives more clearly
  than they see themselves, a capacity to help them
  look beyond the surface and see themselves more
  deeply.

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A Teachers Gifts

• The ability to coach to provoke student
  self-learning.
• A willingness to take risks, especially the risk
  of inviting open dialogue, though where it may
  take us is unknown.

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Giving Back to the Profession

• Try to be the kind of teacher who is
  knowledgeable, enthusiastic, confident, prepared,
  and collegial.
• Serving as a motivated clinical preceptor or
  instructor.

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Giving Back to the Profession

• Volunteer my services in the clinical or didactic
  area, wherever I am needed.
• Attempting to be the best educator and thus leave
  a lasting impression on the students.

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Giving Back to the Profession

• Carry on the tradition of advanced students
  giving topical reviews on the weekends, offer a
  workshop to help better prepare students for
  clinical.
• Be a professional role model.

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Giving Back to the Profession

• Be actively involved in the professional
  organization to ensure the future is bright for
  my peers and successors.
• Sponsor students to professional events.
• Share knowledge with others.

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One who learns in order to teach will be granted
the opportunity both to learn and teach. One who
learns in order to do will be granted not only
the opportunity to learn and teach, but also the
opportunity to do and be fulfilled. Rabbi
Ishmael, Pirke Avot, IV6