Help with Difficult Instructor

[abcabcabc]

i am in my third and final semester of a lpn program. we have 14 students in class. the concern is that only 2 students have passed the tests and quizzes. they barely passed with an 80 which is what is needed to pass the class. if the other 12 students do not come out with an 80 we will all have to wait another year, that is if our gpa's don't take us out first. the questions on the tests and quizzes have two possible answers, and it seems as though the answer is what the teacher says is the right answer. even if the question is found in the book with another answer the teacher will not give credit. half the class is contemplating withdrawing and just giving up. the class starts off with 40 students and only 5 or 6 graduate each year. the students that withdraw all blame the teacher. should the entire class withdraw or try to pull threw and risk our gpa's? this instructor will not return phone calls or answer emails. so many students have complained about this instructor that it is a shame. the rn program has at least 40 or more graduating each program. the lpn program may have 6 graduating a semester. this instructor has taken some courses away from other instructors because the students are passing.

does this mean that we should not be nurses because we cannot pass the teachers tests and quizzes. any help would be nice before we all pull out our hair.

need help badly

[Lucky0220]

This sounds so much like my RN year at the college I graduated from. My LPN program was wonderful, with great instructors, only one of whom is left. I bridged into the RN program, against the advice of many students that were already in it, only because of the convenience. But I have to tell you it was horrible. I did very well, but that was only because I had such a strong foundation from my LPN med surg instructor and I studied all the time. What was so unfair for other students, was that the DON and some other administrators made it next to impossible to help those that were struggling. It was a private college, and they took in students who really should not have been accepted. I think they needed to make the entrance criteria higher, so that these students are not shocked when they see how hard the classes are. The rumor was that they were "weeding out" certain students by the third and fourth quarter, so that their NCLEX pass rates would go up. They got their just desserts when this year, after 5 years straight, the pass rate for RN NCLEX was well below 85% and they have not been able to admit new students into their RN program! Maybe you can take this to your Bd of Nsg. Usually they will investigate legitimate complaints. I wish you all good luck.

[pers]

You could file a complaint about the quiz and test scores but I wouldn't really count on administration having your back on that point. However, I would most definitely file a complaint that you aren't getting your clinical and/or instruction hours! I'd do that even if I was passing the course--you are paying for that time and have a right to insist you get it. If the instructor doesn't want to hold class/clinical one day a week for personal reasons then the dean should be made aware that a fill-in instructor is needed. If the dean doesn't support you, I'd contact the state because most have requirements regarding how many instruction and clinical hours a program needs to have in order for students to qualify to test for the NCLEX.

If the program says you have x number of hours and in reality you are getting significantly less, you might also consider speaking to an attorney about options because I would imagine that qualifies as some sort of fraud.

[husker_rn, RN]

We had an awful course during my junior year; we were all failing and no one wanted to hear about it until we went as a group and pointed out that our consumer $$$ didn't have to be spent at that school. Then the dean paid attention. She had a committee of teachers take the tests we had been taking....and they all failed them too. Needless to say, things changed quickly. You need to work together; Keep emotions under control and focus on facts. Good luck.

[Scrubby]

critical thinking on test questions and as nurses is important. that is why you will find that there may be two possible answers to a test question. lpns must learn critical thinking also. it involves considering a number of factors when answering test questions. please read the information on this sticky thread in the student forums on taking nursing tests:

• https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-student/looking-test-taking-224581.html - looking for test taking strategies
  

i would recommend that instead of treating the instructor as an adversary that you embrace her as a colleague and begin to pick her brain, ask for her help and guidance and take a more positive view of your coursework. if you see this school experience as being negative you are more likely to fail. you need to stop talking with other students about all this negativity and failure. it breeds more failure and makes it harder to concentrate on what you need to learn.

are you trying to imply here that bad instructors don't exist? i'm fairly certain they do

students pay for a quality nursing education, therefore they are entitled to have instructors that are supportive and approachable, an do not deliberately sabotage them.

and student should start being assertive right from the very beginning because there are some pretty horrible doctors, nurses, patients/relatives out there. it helps if you have the skills to be able to deal with obstructive people by being assertive.

[justiceforjoy]

It sounds like that entire program is flawed, not just the instructor. You guys don't get learning packages, syllabus, handouts, learning material, or anything else like that?

For what it's worth: in my program, we are constantly coming across conflicting information in text books and we learned pretty quick not to trust a text book completely.

Are you trying to imply here that bad instructors don't exist?

You kind of pulled that one out of left field, lol

[morte, LPN, LVN]

We had an awful course during my junior year; we were all failing and no one wanted to hear about it until we went as a group and pointed out that our consumer $$$ didn't have to be spent at that school. Then the dean paid attention. She had a committee of teachers take the tests we had been taking....and they all failed them too. Needless to say, things changed quickly. You need to work together; Keep emotions under control and focus on facts. Good luck.

I love it! cool, calm, but sufficiently "in your face" to get the move on......

[Scrubby]

You kind of pulled that one out of left field, lol

It just seemed a bit strange to me for someone to automatically take the side of the nursing instructor.

[tlc2u]

You wrote:

I have gone to her about study options and her only reply is that I may be studying to much.

While in nursing school I sometimes overstudied a concept (by reading every word that our textbook author wrote, when sometimes the authors writing was too indepth for our need). By doing this I ended up more confused and not really understanding the basics of what I needed to know.

After completing school and studying for my NCLEX I wish I had used my Saunders NCLEX study guide throughout school and read that to understand the material before reading my textbook. To prepare for my NCLEX I started with the first step of Suzanne's plan which was to answer the questions at the end of the chapter in the Saunders NCLEX book. In pencil I made a check by the question if I got it correct and if I felt strongly that I understood the material that the question pertained to. I made an X by the questions I got wrong or felt uncertain about the material of that question. Then I went back and read the part in the NCLEX book for understanding of the questions I got wrong or felt uncertain about, and I read the rationales for these questions. This way I was only spending time studying what I did not know and was not wasting time rereading or restudying material I had already learned well.

Also I noticed throughout school many of our test questions were devised using the information from the pictures, charts and textboxes in our textbook. One of our instructors even told us that if the author of the textbook felt it was important enough to provide a picture or textbox or chart for then it was certainly important for us to know. If I did not have time to read everything in my textbook I made sure to understand what was in pictures or boxes.

pers wrote:

I'd contact the state because most have requirements regarding how many instruction and clinical hours a program needs to have in order for students to qualify to test for the NCLEX.

The students at my school thought that might be helpful too, so we checked on our board of nursing website and the only guideline we found was for LPN school, students must have 400 clinical hours and for Rn 500 clinical hours. At the end of the last semester we had no solid way of backtracking exactly how many hours of clinicals we actually attended and how many were dismissed away by one instructor or another.

[Lucky0220]

I have to say that as a former teacher, turned RN, I feel it is the responsibility of the instructor to facilitate the learning of the student. That means, either lecturing about the material that they will be testeing on and/or directing students as to what material they need to read in order to know the material for the test. This is not spoon feeding, but actual teaching. My best instructor (MedSurg), lectured brilliantly. She told us to take good notes, and all her tests were from her lectures. They were total critical thinking questions, SATA, etc. She taught the basic info, theory, but when it came time to test, you had to put it all together. Anyone who couldn"t pass her exams, obviously didn't listen in class or study their notes. She also answered any questions during her lectures in case we didn't "get it". All of this was in my first year of a bridge program. I had her for three quarters and if not for her, I wouldn't have made it through the RN year of the program because most of my instructors were awful.

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

This is one of the situations that made me HATE nursing school. I did well, mind you, but I didn't like what I saw. If you are currently passing, and this is your last semester, do what you have to do to get out. While I do believe that you all may have great points (I saw the same situations happen while I was in school), usually, the saying "You can't fight City Hall" falls under this. Most times, instructors support each other and making waves makes things far worse.

[abcabcabc]

This instructor states to read the chapters at least 3 times each to be prepared for the test. What she says to really study for on the test, it ends up not being any questions concerning that subject. Our final covered 2 books and not one repeated question from our old tests, quizzes or first final was on the second final. Next week is the withdrawal day for the last semester. She has already told the borderline students to withdrawal because there is no way that we can pass not even with 100's on the last test and final. This means that a class of 14 will end up with 6 finishing for the entire program. That is depending on how their grades are at the end. Oddly, this class is taught IV all the students that have this instructor for lecture and labtime which is still lecture time are all passing. The IV class that has another instructor for lecture time during our labtime are failing.

It is just strange that the class that has the teacher all the time are passing, the class that does not are failing except for 2 students. I am not complaining about this teacher intentionally, but fair is fair. It does not hurt to return a phone call or answer emails. If we cannot go to our teacher that we have paid to teach us and prepare us for the world of nursing then who do we go to.

Of course all the other instructors cannot help us with anything other than lecturing because they are not the head teacher or the head of the nursing program. Our teacher is both, the teacher and head of the nursing program. They plainly let us know that from day one. Yes, we are screwed from day one of class. The first semester was fine but we had another head of the nursing program. At the end of that semester that head of the program resigned and the teacher moved up to the position. That is when things went completely down hill from there.

So many students have gone to the Dean and above about this teacher that it is not even funny. We have gone individually as a group and nothing happens to her. Last semester, we were making 90's on the test and this semester that highest grade on 2 tests is an 80, highest quiz grade is a 76. Does this seems okay to you.

[nurseebol]

critical thinking on test questions and as nurses is important. that is why you will find that there may be two possible answers to a test question. lpns must learn critical thinking also. it involves considering a number of factors when answering test questions. please read the information on this sticky thread in the student forums on taking nursing tests:

• https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-student/looking-test-taking-224581.html - looking for test taking strategies
  

i would recommend that instead of treating the instructor as an adversary that you embrace her as a colleague and begin to pick her brain, ask for her help and guidance and take a more positive view of your coursework. if you see this school experience as being negative you are more likely to fail. you need to stop talking with other students about all this negativity and failure. it breeds more failure and makes it harder to concentrate on what you need to learn.

ok, the above post is probably pretty biased to some of you. but i found it mature. yes, there are difficult instructors....and difficult students. i think however, that there does seem to be a problem here. i could see if the instructor was actually helping you to learn something by being tough, but i am not hearing that from what is being said. is there anything positive you can say about this instructor? i find that negativism does spread like wildfire, and once it starts it is sooo hard to put out.

where i teach at (yes i am an instructor) if there is a test like that where sooo many are failing, we will use a curve. this is very rare though. most colleges look very carefully at the pass rate of instructors and if they are all failing, then it is usually looked into automatically. if not, there is a system wide problem.

the advice to document and keep track all of the issues you have is good. it will prepare you for your future, as you have to back everything up in your practice, and quite frankly very often with your employer. to be blunt, it is a pain in the a@#, but that is the world and how it operates. document and use the grievance process. your school should have one outlined in your handbook that there is a grievance process if you fail. keep going to the higher ups, as a group.l i don't know this instructor, but yes there are folks who may be "out to get you" for talking. i wish this weren't the case, but it happens. i wish you all the best of luck, i hate to see people have such trouble. when i attended nursing school i nearly had a nervous breakdown from all the stress; i've been there.