Nursing Education Concept By Kimberly Adams Tufts

Who Is Kimberly Adams Tufts,Professional Life,Interest In Teaching,Journey To Nursing Education,Training for Teaching,Comfort As A Teacher,Challenges,Embarrassing Moments,Rewarding Aspects,Least Rewarding Aspects,Gaining Excellence as a Teacher ,Words New Teachers.

Who Is Kimberly Adams Tufts

    Kimberly Adams Tufts earned the BSN at The Ohio State University, and MSN and ND from Case Western Reserve University. She is an Associate Professor at Old Dominion University and is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. 

    She has been active in the area of health care policy through teaching the subject to nursing students and influencing health policy at the state level.

    Dr Tufts's research focus is HIV prevention with adolescent populations. Her school-based approach aims at advocacy activities essential to promoting the HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment agenda and to alleviating HIV transmission globally. 

    She has lived and worked in Zimbabwe as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Nursing Science at the University of Zimbabwe.

Professional Life

    Upon completion of her doctoral program, Dr. Tufts went into full time teaching. Because the preparation in her master's and doctoral program was aimed at clinical practice, she experienced herself as under prepared for the teaching role. 

    In order to remedy the situation, she searched out courses on how to approach the teaching of adults. Her teaching practices have evolved from a charismatic demonstrator approach into a student-centered partnership approach. 

    She views herself as a lifelong learner who loves teaching and believes teaching is a valuable endeavor.

Interest In Teaching

    Very early in her  life while in high school, She had an after school job teaching reading for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, in a church based enrichment center. So, She thought to myself that She liked doing this. 

    However when She thought about a career, She thought of nursing, and at that time She did not associate teaching with nursing. 

    Her  thoughts were that She was going to college to get an education because that is what her  family expected, even though they did not like nursing as a choice. So She told them, "I am going to college to be a nurse," and they accepted that. her  early interest was to be a great clinician.

Journey To Nursing Education

    She was prepared for teaching in an informal way. At the time She attended the graduate program at the master's level, they had taken away functional roles. She chose the clinical track and did not get a lot of formal instruction in teaching. 

    However, She observed those who She thought were very good teachers, and took two Professional Development courses on teaching/learning. 

    She was also a teaching assistant for one semester, completed her  master's in perinatal nursing, and went on to complete a certificate program to become a nurse practitioner. She practiced 3 to 4 years in advanced practice and participated with students as a clinical preceptor. 

    When the students were in the setting, She knew She had to approach the preceptor ship in a formalized way. On the days She had students, She would rearrange her  schedule to see fewer patients, which was not popular with administration. 

    She thought there was a way to go about teaching so that the student had the structured learning experiences that were needed to be a good clinician. She taught the students in a structured step wise fashion and got to be popular as a preceptor. Everybody wanted me to take their students.

    The other thing that people would invite me to do guest lectures. She lectured on women's health and principles of community health. In her  community work, She was asked to write a prenatal community outreach curriculum for a federal grant. 

    So, She spent a lot of time reading and studying how to set up a curriculum and thinking about training the trainers. That program was federally funded and very successful. That was almost 15 years ago when She had been out of graduate school for about 2 years.

    Then, She went back for doctoral studies and after graduation thought to myself that She should teach. When She went into full-time teaching in 1996, She did not believe She was well prepared. 

    Even though She had been a preceptor, worked on the community teaching project, and been a guest lecturer, She wondered how was She going to be responsible for complete courses by my-self. 

    So, She started to attend the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE). She attended most of their sessions over a 2-year period and learned unbelievable things about pedagogy, although She prefer the term “androgyny” because, even if we teach at the undergraduate level, we are teaching young adults or adults. 

    She teach at the graduate level so She have always been teaching adults. The root word for pedagogy is child and for androgyny, the root word is adult. She read the work of Malcolm Knowles, who focuses on adult learning. 

    Through reading his work, She began to see the difference and importance in thinking about educating adult learners instead of using the pedagogical approach. She learned about the characteristics of adult learners and how to approach teaching adults.

Training for Teaching

    Most of the mentoring She had was informal. She would actually go to courses and sit in on courses that were being taught. When She began to teach policy, She went to the person who taught it for the doctoral program and asked if 1 could sit through her course. 

    She got a lot out of that experience by observing which techniques worked and which ones did not seem to work. One of the deans at her  school would give me informal tips. She remember once she asked me why her  examination was so long. 

    She told me that She needed to think about what the purpose of the examination was, and why She needed so many questions. Hearing things like that from someone who was a role model for me was helpful. 

    She was a graduate assistant for Dr. Wilma Phipps and would get caught up in reading her materials on teaching-learning when She was sup- pose to be filing things.

Developing As A Teacher

    She moved from being a “charismatic demonstrator.” She learned about this concept at UCITE's end of the year spring celebration, where they brought in well known educational theorists to give a lecture. 

    This person was from a small school in Wisconsin; he used to teach at Columbia, but left so he could focus on teaching. He said that most teachers are “charismatic demonstrators,” exhibiting by your manner that you know the material. 

    We are the experts and we demonstrate our expertise to students through our lectures; however, this is not teaching students. We know the material very well and are able to demonstrate the material, and if you are charismatic, students may learn because they are amazed as they watch you in action. 

    They think look at this person, She would love to be like her, and so She am going to emulate her. She realized this in her  first year of teaching when She won the teaching award. She continued to go to UCITE to learn in a more formal and structured way. 

    She would read about principles of teaching-learning and started to look into and study constructive. She just began to build her  repertoire of how and what She should do and be as a teacher. her  goal is that students learn basic and broad principles and that She teach them in such a way that they learn them so that they can apply them in many situations. 

    From the very first moment She have contact with students, whether it's online via email, and especially the very first day of class, She make it known to the students that each student, wherever they are coming from and whatever their level of experience in this particular area, each and every student has something to contribute and is bringing something valued to the table. 

    She may spend, in a 6-day course, 2-3 hours establishing this initial contact with the students. She do it by asking them certain things about themselves and find ways to acknowledge their contribution right then. 

    For example, several weeks ago, She had 23 students in a rather large doctoral seminar and it took me 6 hours to do the introductions. 

    She did not see it as wasted time, because what She did throughout the day was to integrate the principles of the course into our discussion. So, they immediately began to hear the new language and become invested in the course.

Comfort As A Teacher

    She think that it took me probably about 3 years to feel commodity teaching. This was after She finished her  formal education dedicated to UCITE for a year or 2.

Challenges

    She have been challenged by the expectations, teaching beliefs, or philosophies of some of her  colleagues. What She mean is that sometimes She have thought that it was best to teach a subject in a certain way, or maybe that examinations were not needed and papers would be more important in this particular course. 

    Some of her  colleagues believed we should teach the way we were taught, and since most of us graduated from the same graduate program we used the same 26-page midterm examinations that we had taken. 

    She thought this practice was not very productive. She did not think that this testing met our purposes. She wanted to do away with the test. In fact, before two new colleagues joined me in teaching midwifery and women's health to students, She had done away with it, but they insisted that we bring it back. 

     was thought that the students were not being prepared correctly because the test was not a part of the course. That was really a challenge.

    Her other challenge has been that She have had to learn that students come to me at different levels, some students are abstract thinkers, and some are still concrete thinkers despite being graduate students. 

    So, the challenge for me has been how to work with each student at their level and still have them develop and grow. This has been quite a challenge.

Embarrassing Moments

    Early on in her  teaching career, probably about the second year, She taught a large group of students and She was teaching women's health. She had a student who would ask what She considered to be very concrete and not very intelligent questions. 

    o, She would walk the room a lot using that “charismatic demonstration,” turn around and answer this student with an unbelievably expert answer. On the second night She went home, and She thought about it. 

    She thought the way She was responding to the student, even though She never said it in words, but conveying it in her  manner, told her that she was dumb. The next day before the class, She told her that She had something to say to her. 

    In front of the entire 28 students, She said, “This is what She have been doing, and it is not correct. It is demeaning, so She am apologizing to you in front of the class." It was a tough moment. The student needed to have the opportunity to develop and learn just like everyone else. She got through this and it made me a better teacher.

Rewarding Aspects

    The last 3 or 4 years have been rewarding because She am the teaching subject. matter that can be taught from a principle-based approach. She have been teaching doctoral students and include a course that is interdisciplinary. 

    She love history and the law and this is what She have been teaching in the interdisciplinary course, primarily to law students. Both groups of students are highly motivated. It is because these students are self-selected. 

    They want to be there. They want to learn the material. Many times, they don't know anything about the subject matter, and the growth She see makes me feel wonderful as a teacher.

Least Rewarding Aspects

    The least rewarding period was when She was primarily responsible for teaching women's health to three different types of students. The advanced practice students, just like beginning undergraduate students, are very anxious and starved for the most minute details about diagnoses, tests, and medications. 

    Given her  teaching philosophy and her  perspective, She am not doing them any favors by providing them minute details because the details change. When the students are anxious then She am anxious too. It does not add up to the greatest picture. 

    However, after doing it for a year or 2, She began to relax. She think She just entered another time in her  teaching career that will be, at the least, very challenging. She am going to be teaching subjects She have never taught. 

    She have confidence about working through the knowledge piece. However, She am going to have to learn new delivery methods. The school where She will be teaching this semester uses distance education. 

    She am used to seminar techniques. In this new course, She will lecture via television and then have contact with the students via computer. It is going to take me some time to begin to feel comfortable, as there is going to be a rather large learning curve.

Gaining Excellence as a Teacher 

    She maintain excellence by continuing to learn teaching-learning theory with the new knowledge, keeping up to date with the knowledge, and continuing to learn from the students. Teaching is not a stagnant process. She am a lifelong learner of how to teach. This year, She completed a certificate in distance education by taking four courses via computer.

Words New Teachers

    The first thing to remember is that teacher/learner is a partnership. New teachers should not be expected to know everything about the subject matter, nor about teaching methods. 

    So new teachers owe it to themselves as well as to their students to formally learn about teaching, whether it is through taking courses, accessing on-line resources, or choosing a mentor and working with that mentor.

    I love teaching. She absolutely love it! She think that in order to be good at it, you have to see it as a valuable endeavor.