Faculty leaders within the NLN work collaboratively to meet the challenges and opportunities created by today's shortage of nurse faculty and of tomorrow's nurses. Time and time again NLN faculty surveys demonstrate how fulfilling being a faculty member and working with students can be. Too often we do not take the time to share these stories with each other and with those who may be considering a career in nursing education. During the next 12 months, June 2006 through May 2007, you will see new featured Great Moments in Teaching stories on the NLN website. Special thanks to the Recruitment and Retention Task Group and the Healthful Work Environments Task Group for their work with the nurse educator authors to bring you this exciting first series of Great Moments in Teaching.

Call for Great Moments in Teaching Stories for 2007-2008

Please consider sharing your story. Please send a 150 to 200 word description of your Great Moments in Teaching electronically by email to candersen@nln.org. The NLN Task Group on Healthful Work Environments will review them and select the best ones for Great Moments in Teaching featured June 2007 — May 2008.

Joan McCleish, PhD, RN

As an educator interested in meeting the needs of my RN to BSN students who desire online learning, I am cognizant of the fact that not all students embrace it. I recently collaborated diligently with one student in particular to help her develop an appreciation (though not necessarily a preference) for distance education. In the online course, Theories of Teaching and Learning, one method used to help students understand the teaching/learning process is to allow them to become facilitators of a threaded discussion. After completing the assigned readings, students are challenged to formulate questions that encompass the material; these are then used as the starting point of the discussion.

Students act as facilitators for the class, summarizing the discussion at the end. The student I mentioned called, met with, and emailed me about the assignment prior to her turn as facilitator. And I knew I had indeed succeeded in helping her develop an appreciation for online learning when upon completion of the assignment she emailed me to announce, "Now I get it; in this class, sometimes you're the teacher, and sometime you're the learner. It's just like in nursing; sometimes we teach our patients, and sometimes we learn from our patients."

Tricia Young, PhD, RN

It was the third week of the semester in my undergraduate nursing research class, a fairly talkative group of first-semester senior students. You could have heard a pin drop when I started class by asking, "How do you want to spend our time together today?"

From the front row, one student took a deep breath and then in a small voice observed, "I guess this is the move from student nurse to independent nurse." I had to smile as I agreed with the comment and then reiterated my question. I watched as they all looked at each other and then another student tentatively raised a question about something confusing from that week's reading, and our dialogue was underway. It was heartwarming and thrilling to see students getting it — that part of the journey to becoming a nurse means unlearning dependence and reliance on the received view and being open to thinking in a new way — thinking like a nurse.

Carol Patterson, MSN, RN

Twenty-five years ago when I was asked to consider a career as a nurse educator I was concerned that I would no longer be a "real nurse." Today I know that nurse educators change lives as students progress through the program and after they graduate.

While learning respiratory assessment skills, a student confided that her son suffered from severe asthma and had many traumatic visits to the emergency department. She was eager to learn about asthma and learned her lessons well. A year later she reported that her son had no emergency department visits and that his attending physician remarked that her assessment skills and accurate early interventions were directly responsible for this outcome.

The powerful effect of the nurse educator is seen often after graduation. Several years ago at a convention I saw an elegantly attired young woman walking towards me. As she approached I recognized her as a former student. As a student, she was a single mother in dire economic straits with little hope for the future. As a nurse, she had successfully advanced in her career and proudly announced that she had purchased a new home for her daughter and herself. Nursing education was her ticket to a better life.

Twenty-five years later, I now understand that the nurse educator is still a "real nurse" who provides nursing care to countless numbers of people with and through students. Would I make the same choice again? You bet I would!

Lois H. Neuman, PhD, RN

A number of years ago, I taught junior and senior students in a tightly structured, undergraduate nursing program. Two weeks into the semester one of my senior students told me he might want to teach nursing but really wasn't sure since he did not have experience teaching. His area of interest was a topic I was teaching to the junior students. Intrigued, I told him I'd consider his teaching the class and to meet with me.

When we met to discuss the requirements, I prefaced my remarks by telling him it was my responsibility to be certain that the junior students received accurate information. Therefore, if he decided to proceed with the exercise, he would need to do the research, create a lesson plan, rehearse his timing, and see me weekly to review his progress. He understood that I would attend the class to be certain he delivered the information accurately and to assess his ability.

He decided to take me up on the offer and followed through on every requirement. On the day of the class, I introduced him by name and that he was a senior student in the program. Initially he was very nervous but settled into the role and proceeded flawlessly. At the end of the class, one student asked: "Who did you say you are?" He answered: "I'm one of you" and named the class he was taking. After a slight silence, the junior students burst into applause. Caught by surprise, my fledgling lecturer hesitated and then beamed. Needless to say, so did I!

Susan Batten PhD, RN

I was guiding several junior students in performance of a neonatal Ballad assessment. Since I had learned from a real master, rationale and developmental pointers accompanied the hands-on explanation of technique. About midway through the procedure, a staff nurse walked over and said, "I never understood why to do it that way. When I was in nursing school we were taught how, not what and why." Then looking directly at the students, the nurse spoke of how much was learned every time we were on the unit.

I did not generally think of staff as students, but as peers. Later in the day, I sought out the nurse to thank her for sharing the special insight with students and making me smile. We talked about creating a safe environment for learning and mused that education is really a life-long endeavor. I encouraged the nurse to share wisdom with students, and to think about becoming a "learner" again. Ten years later, I am smiling even more: not only did the nurse earn a BSN, but pursued an MSN in education and is now my teaching colleague.

Lauren Jones, PhD, RN

After I finished my MSN in psychiatric nursing in 1975, I began teaching in a BSN program. The students' psychiatric clinical rotations were completed at a mental health center which, at the time, was a catchment facility for patients with many forms of psychosis. When you went on any of the units, you half-expected "Nurse Ratchet" to be in charge. You can imagine the looks on the faces of the students during their orientation to the locked units! Their pupils were dilated and they were literally holding on to each other as they slid along the walls trying to avoid any eye contact with the patients (and some of the staff!).

At the end of their orientation, I met with the students to begin their first post-conference. In the debriefing, I asked the students what they saw, heard, etc. One brave student said that she was surprised because some of the patients were "pretty smart." After much discussion, I told the students that these people had "lost their minds, not their brains" and that we'd be discussing communication strategies as the quarter proceeded.

Several years later, I was making a presentation on continuous quality improvement to key leaders in a major hospital in the northwest. During a break, one of the participants approached me and told me that she had been a student with me during her psychiatric nursing rotation. She reminded me what I'd said about losing minds, not brains and told me that those words had helped her pursue psychiatric nursing. She told me that those words were particularly useful to her with a family member who was out-of-touch with reality because of drug usage. She said it made her realize that many staff spoke-down to the patients and treated them like children. She also commented that she had written down something that we discussed about professionalism during that quarter: that we should take what we do; not ourselves seriously.

Needless to say, it was a neat recollection for both of us!

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