Nursing Education Concept By May L Wykle
Who Is May L Wykle,Interest In Teaching,Willingness For Teaching,Preparation For Teaching,Develop As A Teacher,Comfortable As A Teacher,Comfortable As A Teacher,Challenges,Embarrassing Moments,Rewarding Aspects of Teaching,Least Rewarding Aspects,Advice For New Teachers.
Who Is May L Wykle
May L. Wykle is Dean and Florence Cellar Professor of Nursing at
the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Wykle graduated from the Martins Ferry Hospital School of Nursing, and
earned a BSN in nursing, an MSN in psychiatric nursing, and a PhD in education
from Case Western Reserve University.
She is a fellow at the American Academy
of Nursing and the Gerontological Society of America. She is the past president
of Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI).
She has initiated educational programs
internationally and served as visiting professor at the University of Zimbabwe.
Dr. Wykle has received numerous honors and awards, including the Gerontological
Nursing Research Award from the Gerontological Society of America and
Outstanding Researcher, State of Ohio, by the Ohio Research Council on Aging.
She was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Black
Nurses Association, and received the STTI Elizabeth Russell Belford Founder’s
Award for Excellence in Nursing Education.
She has published extensively,
including co-editing eight books, one focused on student development in nursing
education.
Professional Background
Dr. Wykle has had a wealth of experiences in psychiatric and
geriatric nursing. all of which have shaped her teaching expertise.
She began
her contributions to the scholarship of nursing education early in her nursing
career, coauthoring a text with colleagues in the School of Education.
She is
well known by her students and colleagues for her humor in the classroom, and
for her gift of using many life associations and experiences to emphasize
opportunities.
Interest In Teaching
For several years She was a head nurse in a psychiatric institute
and one of the areas that She really liked was teaching the nursing assistants.
They had a huge responsibility for pouring medicines and doing assessments of
patients without really having the background to do these tasks.
So we began to
teach them what they needed to know. At that same time, She had the experience
of teaching nursing students who came to the units. In those days it was the
head nurse who did the clinical teaching.
We not only made the assignments and
provided supervision, but also had the students for pre- and post conferences .
She really thought teaching was a neat thing to do, so She decided that She should
go back to school.
Willingness For Teaching
She received some formal preparation as part of her master’s program in psychiatric nursing.
Then, later on, after teaching for several years at the university level, She returned
to school for a PhD in Higher Education.
That opened up a whole new world; She learned
much more about theories of learning, how students learn and how teachers
teach.
It was exciting for her to learn
so much more about the classroom, and find out that as much as 1 wanted to
teach and have students progress, learning depended on the student’s readiness
to learn and change.
Her formal
preparation gave her a better idea of
what you do so that students are more interested and eager to learn, rather
than focusing on how well you prepare for class.
She discovered different ways
to learn; e.g, providing visual input at the same time as auditory input. She became
aware that students do well teaching each other.
When they are responsible for
a class it helps them gain more knowledge about the subject. Thus, She found
that seminars were most conducive to learning, particularly for graduate
students.
Preparation For Teaching
At Cleveland Psychiatric Institute (CPI), She was mentored by Helen
Kreigh , the Director of Nursing Education.
She was taught by Dorothy Mereness
and had a bachelor’s degree in nursing education. She remember her saying that
she had prepared a teaching outline and had presented it to Mereness for
evaluation.
At the end of her presentation, Mereness said, “Well, what do you
think about what you have done?” Helen said, “Well, She think it is OK; but,
She know She can do better.” Therefore she passed that course with flying
colors because Mereness said that you are always becoming, and, as a good
teacher, you are never satisfied with your end product.
You want to go further
and achieve more, challenging both students and yourself as the teacher.
Develop As A Teacher
While working at CPI, She attended Case Western Reserve University
and received a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She really enjoyed the classes She
was taking and She liked the way the teachers taught their courses.
So, She enrolled
in school full time and was offered a position at CPI as an Instructor of
Nursing. At that time, we had 11 affiliated schools of nursing; It was a
wonderful opportunity for teaching. She moved from being an Instructor to being
Director of Nursing Education at CPI.
It was a whole new experience for
her because She had responsibility for
all education programs. Every time a school was visited by the State Board of
Nursing or the National League for Nursing, She had to participate.
She learned
quite a bit about teaching and evaluation. We had students for 3 months at a
time for their psychiatric nursing experience and you had time for clinical
supervision as well as the didactic teaching.
There were never too many
instructors-so, as Director, She did a lot of the teaching. That is how She really
started her teaching career, and She thought,
“I like teaching so well, She need to go back to school to improve her skills.” So, She went back to get a master’s
degree in psychiatric mental nursing at Case on government stipend.
Part of the
psychiatric program at that time focused on the educational process; part of
the course work was focused on application. As graduate students participating
in seminars, we were responsible for teaching the group classes.
We spent time
learning how to teach patients, following the model of Hildegard Peplau, who
said that the road to mental health was an educational process. Peplau’s
philosophy of psychiatric nursing fits well with the nursing model of
relationship nursing.
She have always believed that teachers ought to strive to teach less
so that students could learn more. It took a while for her to develop that belief over time because in
the very beginning She was so oriented to teaching using a lecture format.
Yet,
the interactive pre and post-conferences and seminars were so much better and
She was more comfortable with students.
Another way her teaching
style evolved was through teaching patients. She did some part-time work at
City Hospital and did a lot of patient teaching to prepare them for surgery and
discharge. Thus, She have always been involved in teaching, both formally and
informally.
Comfortable As A Teacher
She was comfortable as a teacher when She was at CPI. She think She felt
comfortable because teaching was something that was expected; it was an
expectation of the position.
We had 11 schools of nursing so that meant having
a lot of students in class. She was able to put it all together during the CPI
experience: the didactic, the clinical teaching, and the integration of the
two.
She would say it took her about 6
months of teaching before She felt comfortable. She think part of that was
because She had already had experience informally teaching patients and nursing
assistants.
She was always very comfortable teaching nursing assistants because
She was very comfortable with the content and understood their need. They were
always very eager to learn more.
She believe that for teachers the enthusiasm of the students is
important. If you teach students who are enthusiastic, then you feel that you
are a better teacher and enjoy the experience.
She learned early in her teaching career to encourage students to ask
questions. Sometimes they were reluctant to talk and to ask questions. She use
to say to students, “He who asks a question is a fool for 5 minutes; but, he who
does not ask could be a fool for the rest of his/her life.” Encouraging
students to question is a critical part of the teaching/learning exchange.
Another important factor is that She like teaching and She believe
that it makes a difference. She love to lecture and She use a lot of parables
and stories in her presentations.
She often
tell people that She am a storyteller. She think that the most important part
of her preparation for classes was to be
able to give examples demonstrated through parables.
She have learned a lot
from Gerald Kaplan, because he teaches you to understand students, and to
understand your own insights about students and their ability.
She love his use
of the term “theme interference.” He believed that sometimes the attitudes or
the stereotypes that the teacher had towards the students got in the way of
them being able to develop an effective teacher-student relationship.
Challenges
She had some challenges, first of all, being an African American
teacher when the majority of the students were not African American. She grew
up in the era when bias was legal and cultural differences were exaggerated.
Trying to develop cultural competence among students was a challenge. They did
not call it cultural competence in those days, but it was important to help
students understand the stereotypes that they had, and to be able to work with
different groups of patients and staff.
It was particularly important for
students to understand the relationship between culture and illnesses and its
effect on health promotion.
It helped her to work in a
psychiatric setting, because it gave her
a better appreciation for mental illness, and to understand that
behavior was a question of the degree of illness.
Through education, She was
able to help students become less biased towards the patients. Sometimes we
neglect this aspect even today; we operate on the assumption that students
ought to automatically like everybody that they are working with; instead, when
they do not, we need to help them to understand the importance of this.
Some of her most difficult
times in teaching occurred when She tried to bring people together to
learn-faculty, staff, and students.
One of the skills that helped her was her
knowledge of group process. It helped to bring people together and talk
about a problem: What we need to discuss is in the middle of the table, let us
go around and have everyone express their view on the problem.
It takes the
emphasis away from individual stereotypes and personal views of the situation.
The other piece that is so important in teaching is being able to give feedback
and do it in a structured way, and in the classroom as well.
For example, in
doing seminars She believe that at the end of the seminar sessions you have to
be able to process the learning and have students begin to evaluate each other
and be able to say, “Well, you did not do as well today as you usually do.” Or,
“I did not understand what you had to say.” Or, “That was a really good way you
led that discussion.”
We do not praise as much as we could. We can do that even
in classroom settings. It might help students a lot more if we were to process:
“OK, what was great about the class and what was not?”
This evaluation process
could supplement the course evaluations, which are often at the end of the
course when students cannot always remember the process that occurred.
Embarrassing Moments
She was absolutely exhausted. She sat in the front and closed her eyes from time to time. One of the students
then asked some pointed questions because she thought She was asleep.
And She was;
She had nodded off, but was still able to answer the question. She have had
many embarrassing moments while being taught as a nursing student because She went
to a diploma school that was very structured; you had to have the procedures
down pat.
Students had to go over clinical procedures time and time again, with
supervision and plenty of anxiety. When She became a teacher, She was exactly
the opposite because She thought the most important consideration was to keep
the students’ anxiety down.
She have learned in teaching that humor is
important and relieves tension. She tell stories that demonstrate what it is
that the students need to know. This reduces the students’ anxiety so that they
are able to learn.
Rewarding Aspects of Teaching
She early days as a teacher were important because it helped make
her decision to go back to school to
learn more and get a master’s degree. She thought that there were skills that
She needed to know in order to be a better teacher. It was rewarding to
discover that there was a lot to learn about teaching.
She enjoyed teaching the students from the 11 schools affiliated with
CPI. To her it was rewarding because She
could see the change in the students over the 3-month period of affiliation.
It
was possible to develop even better teacher student relationships over the
3-month period. She still maintain that. for nursing students, you have to model
that student-teacher relationship so that they can learn how to develop
therapeutic nurse-patient relationships.
That is why She believe it is so
important that the student experiences the teacher as a person. She also
believe in letting students participate in designing their own program of
learning.
It took a while for her to
learn this because in the early days, She was so used to lecturing. Also, it is
important to understand what students themselves bring to the learning
experiences. Not only should she, as the teacher, bring examples to the
classroom, but 1 should expect students to bring examples as well.
Least Rewarding Aspects
Her least rewarding teaching experience was when She first started
as a faculty member at Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. She was not
assigned to any formal courses for teaching, which She was really eager to do.
Rather, She was asked to be a psychiatric nursing integrator, which meant that
She met with hospital unit nurses to help them understand the emotional needs
of patients to whom they were assigned.
She went to maternity and pediatric
units, medical and surgical units and any place else in the hospital where a
need was identified. She was not comfortable with this role because the
meetings were scheduled on an as-needed basis.
They would call her and She would have to come to the units
quickly and consult about a particular illness or problem situation. She did
not always have any time to prepare for the teaching that She was asked to do.
And She got lots of calls. Sometimes She would get 50 to 60 calls within a
month. Finally the light came on for her
and She under- stood that She needed to have more control over what was
needed, rather than running back and forth from the school to the hospital on
call.
She decided to set up regular unit appointments to meet with the nurses
and discuss problems that they were experiencing with patients. She organized
seminars for them, usually around themes that would be common for the types of
patients on their units.
For example, She would teach them about pain
management and help them understand that pain was a real problem for the
patient. She used a problem presentation approach, letting them discuss the
case, and then helping them identify the key components of best nursing care
for the patients.
As a group then, they were able to solve the problem and to
gain insight into their own views about patients. Consultation became a
rewarding experience and the emergency calls were reduced.
She developed a
positive teaching relationship with the nurses on the unit. She arranged to go
to units at scheduled times. Sometimes She would go every week, or every 2
weeks.
She was able to use those clinical experiences in her work with faculty and students at the school
of nursing. She would provide consultation to the faculty and students during
unit post-conferences.
Advice For New Teachers
She advice to new teachers is first of all, deal with their own
anxiety around teaching and realize that they don’t have to be so structured or
that they need to have all the answers.
Many new teachers will say, “OK, this
is all She am going to teach,” and are rigid about the course content. She believe
that teaching should always be fun, and that when people enjoy, they learn.
That is why She believe the use of humor is important for beginning teachers
and they should be taught to lighten up.
There is a new two-volume book on teaching that She would recommend
for educators.
It is titled Teaching Nursing: The Art and Science, by Linda Caputi
, EdD, RN, and Lynn Engelmann, EdD, RN (published by the College of DuPage
Press, 2004). Also She would recommend the book that She wrote many years ago
on teaching; it was co-authored with LitwakandSakata .
In that book we
discussed concerns that students have around the learning experience. Teaching
to her is helping students meet their
developmental needs.
She believe that teachers need to know where students are
in terms of their development, and that student development is a critical part
of any teaching-learning process. If you can assess where students are and
where you want them to be, you can be a much better teacher.