Nursing Education Concept By Diana Lynn Morris

Who is Diana Lynn Morris

    Dr Diana Lynn Morris is an Associate Professor of
Nursing and Associate Director for Programming at the University Center on
Aging & Health Case Western Reserve University. 

    She earned an associate
degree in nursing from Point Park College, a bachelor’s degree in nursing from
Pennsylvania State University, and a master’s and PhD in nursing from Case
Western Reserve University. 

    She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing
and is a past recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Faculty
Scholar Award in Geriatric Mental Health with a focus on long term care
residents.

    Dr Morris has received an Award of Appreciation
from the master’s in nursing science students at the University of Zimbabwe;
the National League for Nursing Lucile Petry Leone Award for Teaching
Excellence; and the Elizabeth Russell Belford Founders Award for Excellence in
Education from Sigma Theta Tau International. 

    Dr Morris’s research interests
include self care in elderly family caregivers, geriatric mental health, the
health of minority elders, and training of formal and informal caregivers. She
has authored numerous book chapters and is published widely in refereed nursing
journals.

Journey to Nursing Education

    Dr Morris’s story is a journey in learning and
teaching, from the bedside to the university classroom, from rural America to
Africa. She believes that a large part of her success derives from her early
teachers and strong mentors throughout her practice and teaching career.

Early Interest in Teaching

    Her first teaching experience was in first grade
when Mrs. Varnham, her first grade teacher, asked me to help others with their
reading. She was able to read before going to school because her grandmother
had taught me to read and do math before she went to first grade. 

    Even though
her grandmother had to quit school and go to work, she valued education and
encouraged us to learn. We had a special shelf in the living room for our
books. She would encourage us to role-play; she would pretend to be a newspaper
reporter, store clerk, preacher, or teacher. 

    We always talked about things
going on in the community and news with her grandparents and parents. We were
not excluded like some young women were. Her grandparents had all girls and
then her parents had girls, and we were always part of the discussion.

    Teaching others to read in the first grade was a
special experience for me. It made me feel good to be able to help. Her desire
to learn and help others learn also was reinforced by her participation in
Bible School and the teachers there.

    Another important experience occurred in high
school. She had a teacher who believed in mastery, so when she finished one
book she had others to recommend. You could move on even if the other students
were not ready to do so.

    Her early interest in teaching nursing occurred
when she was a student in an Associate Degree nursing program. She thought that
quality nursing care was not being provided to the patients. At that point she thought
she would like to teach because, as a nurse educator, she could make a
difference in nursing care.

    Her interest in teaching nursing was reinforced
when she was a nurse manager, working with staff and trying to support their
development. She was a nurse manager at 21 years old when she was too young to
know that she should not be. 

    She started taking management and general
education courses so that she could do a better job with staff development.
While in this leadership role as a nurse manager, 1 had an idea of the content
that she wanted to present but she did not know much about how to deliver the
content. 

    She did not know about curriculum development or educational design.
So she signed up for workshops and some formal classes as well. She also worked
closely with an experienced teacher from the nursing education office who could
provide guidance and supervision for her teaching. 

    As a manager, she was
further influenced to think about teaching by a nursing professor from a local
university who had students on her unit and also by one of the staff
development faculty. Both of these individuals kept telling me that she was a
very good manager but that they thought her calling was teaching.

    Her first formal teaching experience was soon
after she finished her baccalaureate degree. She had a clinical teaching
position, supervising the clinical learning of RN to BSN students. 

    She then
took a teaching job at a diploma school, and was using that to pay for her master’s
degree education. So, she was using the content she gained in workshops to
prepare myself in topics such as curriculum development, testing students,
designing courses, designing objectives properly, and lesson planning. 

    She was
also working with colleagues who were known as excellent classroom and clinical
teachers, so that she observed and interacted with quality role models. She selected
those who had expertise in the areas that she needed to develop, such as
clinical teaching and test construction.

Readiness for Teaching

    When she enrolled for the baccalaureate degree
program at Penn State she was in one of the early external degree programs in
the western part of the state. She enrolled for general education courses as
part of her elective credits in the BSN program. 

    She also continued to
participate in education workshops and continuing education focused on
teaching. When she was in Pittsburgh she participated in a number of workshops
focused on the dynamics and artistry of engaging learners, and the process of
interaction in the classroom. 

    These workshops were not just about how to create
a course outline or structure for an exam, but rather they were focused on the
mutual interaction between faculty and student, and the teacher’s use of self
as a tool in the classroom.

    She was teaching full time and was studying for
her master’s degree part time. She continued to participate in workshops
designed for nurse educators that were offered in the local community. 

    One of
the workshop faculty members was Dr. Litwak, who had been at Kent State. He was
conducting many workshops around curriculum development. In addition, her master’s
degree program included a focus on educational principles, as it was a
psychiatric nursing curriculum designed to prepare clinical specialists. 

    The
courses included change theory and adult learning principles. Components of
educator preparation focused on adult learning, change theory, staff
development, and management were all part of the preparation for clinical
specialists for indirect services to support quality care. 

    One of the books
that she read at that time, recommended by the director of the psychiatric
nursing program, was Teaching as a Subversive Activity; it is one of the most
outstanding books she have ever read on teaching. 

    It includes a focus on the
Socratic Method and emphasis on the fact that the teachers’ questions are not
as important as the students’ questions. Another book that influenced me was
one by Litwack and Wykle, focused on counseling and clinical supervision of
students. 

    It is the best thing she has ever read in this area of educator
preparation. She still recommends it to graduate students. She was already
interested in teaching and had been doing teaching, but this graduate
education provided an opportunity for me to integrate the learning.

Training  For Teaching

    She have absolutely been mentored in teaching, she did
not know it then, but she was mentored by one of her first faculty members,
Helen Wright, who taught me in the Associate Degree nursing program. She had
grown up in a rural community and did not know much about the world; she told
me she could be a leader. 

    She took me under her wing and started to expose me
to the larger community, and to various roles and ways she might participate in
the community. She was a role model and a mentor to me.

    Her main mentor has been May Wykle. In fact, she came
to Case because she had met May at some staff development classes she was
presenting. She decided she wanted to study with her and learn to be a
therapist from her. 

    She also learned about teaching from her because she worked
for her as a graduate assistant. This position included formal teaching as well
as participation on research and training proposals and grants. 

    She learned
about curriculum development and innovative programming while preparing
training proposals with May, working with the grant supported students, and developing
clinical sites to support the curriculum.

Grooming as a Teacher

    Her teaching has evolved so that she now approaches
the process in terms of working with and thinking about the interaction with
students. She not only considers this interaction in clinical teaching but also
in working with them in the classroom. 

    Her teaching style is informed by what
she learned as a psychiatric nurse and by the clinical supervision that she had
in her own educational program. She has used that kind of clinical supervisory
process as a teacher, where she seeks out a master teacher to be a supervisor
to me. 

    She use this process as she would if she were in a therapy role, to
monitor myself in terms of how she am relating to students, and to determine if
she have too much energy around some issue and may have her own theme
interference or bias. 

    Talking to someone in a supervisory capacity is part of
her own learning and development. She has also continued to enroll in workshops
and continuing education courses to assist me in thinking about different ways
of designing courses and different approaches to teaching. 

    Even at research
conferences if there are papers presented on education that she think will be
helpful, she will attend these presentations.

Comfortable as a Teacher

    She was comfortable teaching in a clinical
setting and supervising students in clinical experiences within a couple years
after she started teaching. Initially, she had a much greater comfort level
with clinical teaching because she felt very comfortable with her knowledge in
her specialty area. 

    Also, having been a manager in the clinical setting helped
me to feel comfortable in clinical teaching. In the classroom, she am not sure
exactly when she began to feel comfortable, but it was sometime during her master’s
degree program when she was teaching part time. 

    Probably it was 3 to 4 years
after she started teaching that she became comfortable in the classroom. she think
she was mature enough that it was alright with me if she did not always have
the answers, or if students raised issues that she had not already addressed. 

    Even now when she am preparing a new course, and presenting it for the first
time, there is some discomfort; but not like it was when she first started
teaching. The discomfort comes from knowing that if it is something new, it may
not work exactly the first time, and that is OK. 

    You work through it and you
work with the students, and you resolve any questions that might occur. You
identify what is working and what is not working. 

    As a teacher, one reaches a
maturity level where any difficulties or problems are not perceived to be
personal inadequacies but part of the process of evaluation and course
development. It is important to invite the students to join in the process. She
tries to do that every time she starts a class. 

    She communicate to the students
that this is their class, and she am there as a resource. When she was younger
in teaching or just younger in terms of her career in general, even though she did
some inviting of student input, she wasn’t as comfortable with it.

Challenges

    Some of her most significant challenges have been
related to facilitating students’ growth. A couple of students she had decided
in classes they were just marking time and they either already knew the content
or they did not need to know it. 

    In fact, there is always the potential to
grow. she have to be careful because she think sometimes (more often in the
past), if she am not careful she start to get frustrated and sometimes angry in
situations where her perception is that a student does not wish to learn. 

    That
is a difficult situation. She think she manage it better than she used to
because she try to focus on what she can do to make the situation different.
Yet, maybe sometimes there is nothing she can do. She needs to let that person
just be where he or she is, even if it is not where she would like the person
to be.

Embarrassing Moments

    She went to do a class on interpersonal relations
and professional relationships that she was teaching for nutrition graduate
students. She had been hurrying in her morning preparations. 

    She did not have
her glasses on when she got dressed and when she got into the classroom she had
on two different shoes. There are other times when she is talking about
something and the wrong word comes out. 

    For example, one time she was trying to
say circumscribe and she said circumcised. It was with a younger group of
students, so they thought that was pretty funny, and that she was pretty much
an idiot. 

    She am the one that always edits things, and she have her technical
equipment, but she do not always follow the detailed steps well enough not to
make or correct editing mistakes. 

    So when she does err, she has to beg for
patience from some students who want it perfect. They equate mistakes with the
faculty member not being organized or prepared.

Rewarding Aspects

    She enjoys teaching more each year. It is more
fun partly because it is less stressful. She has had more experiences with a
variety of students in a variety of settings, dealing with different
information and different resources. 

    Besides the structured evaluations the
students do for the University, she always asks them, no matter what level
student they are, to do a narrative self evaluation. It is rewarding to see
different things that emerge from the learning that occurs in students. 

    When
they really get something about what you were hoping to communicate, or they
really understand, it is re- warding. For example, in the aging course that she
teaches one of the greatest things is having new students gain insight into the
relationship between culture and health or the humanity of those they care for. 

    They would say things like, “One of the things that she learned is, she really
has to listen to people and pay attention. She am not just taking care of the
equipment.” It is not so much a singular event, but the change in students
caused by events. If you can facilitate that learning, it is rewarding.

Least Rewarding Aspects

    Some of her least rewarding times were when she got
frustrated when other teachers labeled students who asked questions as
deviants. That was frustrating to me, and it is still frustrating even though
she think she is more mature now and do not always interpret this in an
antagonistic way. 

    She try to understand the perspective of the other teachers,
yet sometimes she still have to be righteously indignant. From her perception
of this type of response to students does not allow them to reach their
potential. 

    It closes off the options for students’ learning, and that is
frustrating for her. She particularly saw this happen at the diploma school
where she taught, students who asked questions were perceived negatively. They
were not deviant; they often just had more creative ideas and a great
curiosity. 

    The attitude of the other teachers made it easy for me to decide to
leave there, even though she wasn’t sure what her next position would be and
there was a benefit that was helping to pay for her graduate education.

Maintaining Excellence

    She think the most important thing that one can do
is to grow as an educator. This can be accomplished by going to workshops and
seminars. So, she learns from each class she teaches. 

    She always uses some more
experienced faculty member as colleague supervisors who can help me process how
she am doing. She thinks that it is important for the educator to be a lifelong
learner. 

    Also, the professional behaviors that we encourage among our students
are relevant for us as faculty as well; ie, it is important to continue to
develop self-awareness and understanding. 

    Invite others to give you feedback
and listen to the feedback that you are given. For me part of the development
of excellence is to continue to play with ideas and focus on interactions with
students as they learn the “ahhas.” 

    The mutual interaction between
students and faculty is important to me; it challenges me to keep thinking and
to keep looking for something new. she is always learning something from the
students on hearing another perspective she have not heard before; that keeps
me energized.

Advice for Teachers

    One of the most important things new teachers can
do is to recognize that teaching is not a one-way street. The teacher must be a
lifelong learner, not only in your particular area of expertise, but also in
how you think about teaching. Know also that you will make mistakes.

     You will
edit things in correctly. You do not have to have all the answers. It is
actually good to let students know you do not have all of the answers, but that
you can teach them how to seek answers and solve problems for themselves.