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As I sit in my little office and grade one of the many final
exams for my students, occasionally I sit back to think about this past semester.
My overall goals for my ministry are Help, Educate, Activate, and Lead, but I
wonder—have I even come close to meeting them?
Certainly I have been able to help the faculty as they teach
their courses. Primarily, I worked with 2 different Ugandan professors helping
them in a total of 4 classes and 1 clinical day. By the end of the semester, I
was doing most of the lectures for 2 of the courses. This freed up the faculty
members to get other things done from their long “To Do” list, which included
organizing and labeling the new equipment acquired for the nursing lab.
Another aspect of helping (and educating) for which I was aiming
was to share my knowledge. Certainly for the informatics* course I did a lot of
knowledge sharing both with students and faculty. Some students had very little
computer experience, so even teaching them how to copy and paste or click and
drag was new. We reviewed excel, demonstrated electronic health record systems,
and created databases---all helpful skills for this group of students, many of
whom are already in leadership positions at their places of employment. Surprisingly,
there has been more of a push lately at some facilities to move towards
computerized charting. So classroom discussion centered on the positive and
negative aspects of such changes, including cost effectiveness for facilities
already lacking in resources.
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| Teaching in my informatics class, where I most consistently have a portable projector (praise God!). *Informatics is the study and meaningful use of technology in ones practice---so how appropriate to have projector to demonstrate technology with :) |
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| Working with the degree completion students in their informatics course. These adult students will either share a laptop or bring their own. |
In general, the use of technology in Uganda is limited,
particularly in classroom education (though you are starting to see this change).
Being from the US, I have grown accustomed to easily integrating technology
into my teaching plans. Here, those pieces of my former teaching style are not
easily accessed. Though I find this frustrating and confining, it also forces
me to be extra creative and frequently pray to God that any new idea can manifest
itself into what I hope. Such circumstances, overall, have made educating the
students challenging and demanding, but ultimately rewarding –especially when
you catch a glimpse of enhanced knowledge pass across their eyes.
As they continue to learn and grow, hopefully they recognize
the importance of the material I attempt to emphasize. Things like choosing priority
assessments, anticipating nursing care, developing good follow-up questions,
gathering pieces of critical data to inform their decisions, and working as a
team to improve patient care. All are important for creating good nurses to
give quality care and to be leaders within their facilities.
Considering all the above, I guess my overall goals, in many
ways, are being met though far from being fully attained. Making such progress
will hopefully help to sustain me as I progress into the next semester. Now, I
really should get back to grading…
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| I look super serious here, but I promise I wasn't yelling :) |
