I've been scanning posts in the nursing student section for awhile to get a "pulse point" Check about what's on students' minds. I'm a longtime educator (11+) years at a major university and a longer time nurse (29 years). I'm also an acute care NP with a PhD. I understand that this site has forums for networking, venting, problem solving and support for students of various levels. I find it utterly fascinating and disturbing about how much of the frustration is displaced to instructors when students' achievements don't match their personal expectations.
Timefor a few realities about faculty:
1. It's hard to recruit and retain good clinicians to teach when the academic side pays much less than the corporate side.
2. We don't set out to trick or "weed" anyone out. We need to know that students have achieved a minimal mastery level of key concepts.
3. There is an expectation that students who want to be nurses will do the work in terms of preparation, reading, asking questions, and coming to class.
4. We expect you to be a thinker and apply the information to different contexts. It is not unreasonable to expect you to pull prior content from other courses through to the patient in front of you right now. Patients will die and/or have bad outcomes if you can't minimally apply key content to different situations and critically think.
i think I'm done lurking here. I wish all the students the best of luck going forward!
Specializes in Mental Health, Gerontology, Palliative.
I think the effectiveness of a tutor can be summarised by the amount of students who pass the paper
My year three cultural safety paper was taught by one of the most culturally unsafe people I have ever met. Her passion was obstetrics, and one day I witnessed her rolling her eyes at a mother who said she was going to bottle feed as opposed to breast feeding
Our assignment was "take one aspect of cultural safety, and one aspect of social sciences and smoosh it together to come up with some wonderfully great new topic and then present on it"
The vagueness of the assignment was reflected in the fact that over 60% of the class failed the assignment. Despite our attempts to get the tutor to clarify the assignment better, that had also been a dismal failure. fortunately the next year, the assignment was changed to something else, because our year was a dismal failure
Students need to take responsbility for their learning by asking the tutor to clarify and explain, sometimes it just doesnt work
As a pre nursing student who has been reading this board for awhile I can shed a small amount of perspective on this mentality.
In all of my prior courses, save for Micro and A&P, as students we were coddled and given study guides and reviews to know what we needed to study for exams. As I progressed to higher classes I saw this trend diminish and I admit I struggled. I was not used to having to work so hard for good grades and I had trouble adjusting to having to study more material on my own and really get the information down as a whole rather than just studying the minimum to pass.
I don't believe that this falls on the instructors shoulders and I don't blame any of my instructors for the grades I received. I blamed myself for not putting more of an effort into studying in a new way. I guess I can see where some people would feel that an instructors is to blame when they are used to being taught a certain way.
I am very worried about making the grades I want in nursing school. I have trouble studying from a book and much prefer auditory and hands on as I retain so much more this way. In Microbiology, I did excellent in lab! However, my downfall was in lecture and I had a very hard time figuring out the best way to study and retain that information. It was not my instructors fault, in fact I think she was an awesome teacher.
I think it is very hard for students to accept a larger role in their education when they have become used to being taught a certain way and I believe this is a struggle for students of all ages.
I always tell my patients that if they google their new diagnosis they will always see the worst possible scenario. The reason is simple- people that get better right on schedule usually go live their life and don't hang out on message boards talking about their problems.
The same rules applies here. Students who go through their program, have good instructors, follow the rules, pass their courses and pass the NCLEX don't come to allnurses to discuss this. They go become nurses and do their jobs.
Those that have believe they had poor experiences (real or believed) come to complain, have their hand held or vent.
There are programs that have weed out classes and poor instructors.
There are also poor students who couldn't learn to be a nurse if the faculty consisted of three wise men and a dean who was born in a manger.
Where did you get that "purpose" defintion from? Who defines "add any value beyond what the book offers"? you? People often have in their mind what they expect and if that doesn't happen they feel they are not "learning". I am a Vet and lots of the crap we did in the military seemed absolutely pointless...expect that it taught us to navigate challenges and perserverence and accomplishment. I look at everything as survival. What DIFFERENCE does it make who the teacher is. The point is you must get from point A to point B successfully. That is it! SIMPLE. If a teacher is absolutely doing something unethical (not showing up on time, drunk) then yes...address it. Otherwise learn how to finish what you start and not quit. How much do I actually remember from my organic chem in 2003. Very little. However what I do remember is that no matter how difficult it was (and it was brutal) I was able to get through it successfully by many many hours of hard work. That serves me well to this day. So..why would any "reasonable" person pay to attend school? because to be an RN you must be licensed and to be licensed you must have graduated from an accredited school. Non hackers will always have a reason why they didn't do something..and it usually involves blaming someone or something else.
Specializes in psych, addictions, hospice, education.
Sometimes students want a blueprint of what they should study for an exam. I do not like those things. If one studies just to pass the test, lots of other equally important information is ignored. An exam only has so many questions, and can't ask everything that matters.
Nursing school is about mastering the facts and learning how to use them, not just mastering them. It's about thinking (sometimes outside the box), and not just about memorizing.
I was inspired by a few great professors I also learned a few things not to do, just as I have working as a nurse. It doesn't change from school to the work environment. I also like to share knowledge, I'm starting a MSN-education program soon. I love working with students especially the ones that want to learn. Ultimately everybody has to be accountable for themselves, learners and instructors.
i would have to agree with the person you attacked, what reasonable person would attend a school that didn't teach. You are trying to defend that ?????
Where did you get that "purpose" defintion from? Who defines "add any value beyond what the book offers"? you? People often have in their mind what they expect and if that doesn't happen they feel they are not "learning". I am a Vet and lots of the crap we did in the military seemed absolutely pointless...expect that it taught us to navigate challenges and perserverence and accomplishment. I look at everything as survival. What DIFFERENCE does it make who the teacher is. The point is you must get from point A to point B successfully. That is it! SIMPLE. If a teacher is absolutely doing something unethical (not showing up on time, drunk) then yes...address it. Otherwise learn how to finish what you start and not quit. How much do I actually remember from my organic chem in 2003. Very little. However what I do remember is that no matter how difficult it was (and it was brutal) I was able to get through it successfully by many many hours of hard work. That serves me well to this day. So..why would any "reasonable" person pay to attend school? because to be an RN you must be licensed and to be licensed you must have graduated from an accredited school. Non hackers will always have a reason why they didn't do something..and it usually involves blaming someone or something else.
i would have to agree with the person you attacked, ....
Disagreeing with someone is not the same thing as "attacking" them. There was no "attack" here, there was disagreement and the presentation of another (differing) opinion on the topic. I suppose, by your definition, YOU are attacking the next person because you disagree? Lots of punctuation marks doesn't make it more valid than someone else's. You hold one opinion, someone else holds another.
Really the only way to have a constructive debate, don't you think?
[h=1]RNsRWe very well said.[/h]I Love respectful debates in my class, it propagates critical thinking. Stories or personal experiences are also a great way for many to learn, because it brings to light what they are being taught. Many learn differently and as teachers we are trying to find the best way to get our points across to each student. Some get it the first time, others need a little more.
The first day of school I had students say that they were paying to be taught not to have to read everything themselves. I told them that there is no way we can teach them everything that they need to know, so we teach them how to find their answers good resources to use, find good mentors. We go in depth on the things they will see in their community and touch upon the the lesser.
I remember reading one paragraph about Gillian Barre in school, one of my first jobs was taking care of a unit full of vented GB patients. Guess what I read a lot and used my mentors and learned from my patients. I had two awesome military nursing instructors, they were tough, I respected them and we had hugs and tears together.
I'm sorry, but I just graduated the ADN program at my school and my entire class had to teach THEMSELVES the whole second year. We only had class around 2-3 times in the course of a YEAR! That is the teacher's fault. You may be a good teacher, but I don't know you. I do know that the teachers I had for my LAST year were terrible and don't deserve that title!
Tenebrae, BSN, RN
2,021 Posts
I think the effectiveness of a tutor can be summarised by the amount of students who pass the paper
My year three cultural safety paper was taught by one of the most culturally unsafe people I have ever met. Her passion was obstetrics, and one day I witnessed her rolling her eyes at a mother who said she was going to bottle feed as opposed to breast feeding
Our assignment was "take one aspect of cultural safety, and one aspect of social sciences and smoosh it together to come up with some wonderfully great new topic and then present on it"
The vagueness of the assignment was reflected in the fact that over 60% of the class failed the assignment. Despite our attempts to get the tutor to clarify the assignment better, that had also been a dismal failure. fortunately the next year, the assignment was changed to something else, because our year was a dismal failure
Students need to take responsbility for their learning by asking the tutor to clarify and explain, sometimes it just doesnt work