Nurturing Students One-to-One
The three instances described below involve students on the edge, not typical
students. Each faculty member realized the need to adjust to the
student. In doing so successfully, they kept the students enrolled longer
and prospering rather than quitting out of fear or frustration.
| "Teaching nursing has the advantage of containing both
a didactic and a hands-on clinical component. I enjoy the
classroom, but the clinical time is usually more rewarding (though more
exhausting!).
"The one example that stand out was a student who could only be
described as panicked by the thought of actually caring for a live,
human patient. She was bright, articulate, caring, [and] wanted
desperately to be a nurse, but was not going to complete the program
because of her own anxiety and self-doubt about her abilities to apply the
skills and knowledge she was gaining in the hospital setting.
"On this particular day, she was assigned to a very ill
patient. We discussed what the plan for the day would be, she
understood the pathophysiology of the patient's illness, and she
verbalized what would be required to care for this patient. Five
minutes after leaving the initial conference, I found her sobbing in the
hallway, unable to enter the patient's room! My initial instinct was
to send her home and suggest a career as a Wal-Mart associate, but
something made me determined to get her over this. So we literally
held hands, entered the patient's room, and started the day
together. Before each skill, we discussed what would be needed, then
did it together. Every time she started to panic, we went
back to basics and did it together. Eventually, I left the room, and
she started caring for this person by herself.
"The moral of the story: She thanked me repeatedly for
getting her over the hump of self-doubt and for essentially prodding her
into succeeding. I realized after that day that many of the students
that I had been considering "unsuitable" just needed more
hands-on learning and encouragement. I also came to appreciate the
individual contact with students." |
You're Not in the Army Now
"I tutored a retired military man for spelling for 9 months.
He turned from one who avoided writing to one who was able to write for me
a letter of recommendation.
"We worked one-to-one for an hour each week, using his writing to
find patterns in his misspelling and discussing the pattern he needed to
understand to spell those words correctly. He became hopeful as he
began to realize that the task might be more finite than he had thought if
he could learn patterns instead of one word at a time.
"We used materials that I had planned to develop into a textbook
or website on spelling. I got to try out ways of analyzing and
presenting patterns while he got to see some system in the chaos.
"We also got to know a bit about each other. He told me how
he dodged writing or minimized writing tasks during his time in the
military; I told him about problems my family members faced that were
similar to his.
"I learned that real teaching is one-to-one, that teaching and
learning require trust, probably mutual trust. I also learned that
the stakes can be very high in terms of self-concept, career goals, and
persistence. As his skill increased some, his confidence did, too,
and his fear and dread of writing began to subside a bit." |
The Last Moment
"My single best experience occurred when a student approached me
concerning advising issues. I spent 45 minutes with her in my office
just to find out that I was not her advisor. Later on, she stated
that she could never find her advisor and that had she not talked with me
and gotten the answers and cooperation that she did, she would never have
stepped foot on this campus again. I'm really glad she decided to
stop at my office door. Maintaining her enrollment was well worth
the 45 minutes of my time." |
|
1999