Final Teaching project --completion

Whew!  That was more nerve racking than it should have been!  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I do feel relief that I didn't mess up too bad, but I left somethings out when I saw the time getting short.  I should have done the follow up with the post-test differently.  I rarely have time to give one so I'm not used to that.  It was very much a learning experience that was certain.  I was interested to learn the students at UTB don't have to wear uniforms.  I didn't either and really see no good reason for it in the classroom.  I was glad I got there early and was able to observe Janet Williams who covered Integamentary very well.  I learned some things today from her lecture.  Overall it was good and I learned a lot but I am glad to have completed it!

Final Teaching project --preparation

Well I am preparing for my teaching project and find that nothing is going as I thought but that is life.  I was hoping to be able to teach something that is in my area of expertise but no such luck.  I had difficulty finding someone who I could do the class for and finally found Janet Williams who agreed to let me teach her class on burns.  This is a topic which I haven't thought much about for 25 years since Nursing School so I had to study up and read about it quite a bit to refresh my memory.  It occurred to me that it's a bit like life, you never quit having to study, learn and update your skills.  Oh well, the world moves fast and we have to keep up!  Will reflect on this more after it's done next week.

evaluation of learning

As I continue on this path I am reflecting on how an instructor knows when learning as occurred in a class.  I think about this a lot when the grades aren't what I would have hoped for.  In the beginning I was so dumb and had no idea of how to write a test question or even that most of the time the ones provided by the text book companies could be used.  I would go along using what had been used before me or making up questions as I went along.  I was sometimes shocked to find students asking me questions on a test about the meaning of words I had used.  I took for granted that the students understood such words as "rigid" or "reliable".  I learned very quickly not to take anything for granted.

I would spend hours hand typing a test only to have the terrible computers stop halfway through and I would lose everything!  This happened on more than one occasion until I complained to my son who happily informed me about the auto save feature.  When I look back on those early days I realize it was truly the blind leading the blind.

Now the process of evaluation is much easier.  The testing is easier and now I know I don't have to wait till it's time to test to ask them questions to see if they have gotten the information I want them to learn.  I know how to make a blueprint or as I used to call it a review sheet to be sure the have studied the concepts that they will be responsible for knowing.  I  know to base all of this on the learning objectives for the chapter or concept I want to convey to them.  Through experience and what we have been reading and studying in our course work I know more about the process than I did when I started this program.  That to me is good progress.

Online learning

Well I have been reflecting on the process of online learning and what I have learned in the last year and 4 months.  I have been giving it some thought for awhile now and I think I have come to a decision.  I will try to go hybrid with my mental health and mental illness class the next time I teach it in the summer.  It must seem like a bold and crazy step to those of you who know me but the time seems right to begin to plan for that eventuality.
When my instructor asked the question how could we do our practice teaching project in an online format.  I asked myself...."could I?"  The answer is yes I will give it my best shot.  We need to be able to fit the curriculum into a shorter time in the summer anyway and this may be a perfect time to look at doing it.  I find when something scares me it's best to just dive in and do it.  If I think about it too long I tend to obsess and that's never helpful.  So everyone send me some positive energy because I'm sure I will need it.

October is Nearly Here!

The semester is underway and it started off with a bang.  We are taking a nursing education class as well as a community health class.  I never thought I would have  much interest in that because I didn't see it as "my cup of tea".  I am not sure why I felt that way exactly, I have done a lot of community health type nursing in my nearly 25 years in this profession.  I have done home health and hospice, even starting and being part owner of a home health agency.  I worked for a  time as a rehab case management nurse, a DON at a long term care facility that had a lot of old psych patients that got out of the state hospital in the 70's and had no where to go after deinstituionalization. I was a  prior approval and concurrent review nurse for an HMO for a very short time.  I did Community Based Alternatives for the Department of Human Services.  My favorite was being the nurse for a day program for chronically mentally ill clients.  I also did school nursing for a year out at La Joya ISD, that is really the front line of community health with kids that have no other possible way to get any health care because they can't afford it.  So as I was looking into what community health nursing is all about I realized that we really do not train our students nearly enough in that area.  Maybe they do in a BSN program but many of our vocational nursing students will work in either home health, adult day care, schools or for the health department  or a clinic at some point.  All of those are community based and they will approach that with very little introduction and even less hands on from clinical experiences.  So that made me see a need where I could make a difference.I might be able to improve our program, our students preparation and ultimately that would benefit patient care of our area.  So now what I thought was going to be a class I might not be too "into" has made me realize that it could be a really good thing to have to take after all.  I feel like it has opened me to something new that may not be my first passion but is very much related to the whole.
It's all good!

Back for our last year!

Well it's hard to believe that we have been working on this for over a year now.  It seems like just yesterday when I took my first tenuous steps towards getting my MSN in Nursing Education at University of Texas-Brownsville.  As I look back on the experience I see how far I've come and how much I've learned.  For one thing I hadn't had to use a dictionary in years.  I am an average person who I always thought was fairly articulate.
So much of the terminology in the beginning I had to look up to understand things like, constructionist or epistemology.  That was somewhat humbling but rather cool to be learning new things again!  Then there was the hurdle of the whole technology issue.  Sometimes I feel like the world is hurling along faster and faster and there are not enough hours in the day nor neurotransmitters in the synapses to be able to understand it all.  I'm not perfect yet but I have made a lot of progress.  I purposely took a part time consulting job this summer to help a charter school put their CNA program into an online format.  As it turns out it was all pretty cut and dried but I realize it was the challenge of doing it and facing my fear that had me.  Now I feel more confident with it.
I guess some have fear or insecurity about being in the classroom or the clinical setting.  I have been doing that long enough that I don't have a problem with any of that.  I guess we all have our areas that are challenging to us.  I can't wait to see how much I can learn and grow this year, it's going to be awesome!