Checking Our Attitudes About A & P Students "These Days"

Ever been part of aconversation among faculty about "students these days"and how unmotivated they are, or how they lack the skills or knowledge that you'd like them to have? Yeah, me too.Today in my dailyNuzzel newsletter, I shared an excellent article from Faculty Focus that does a great job ofexposing the dangers of such conversations. Dangers to students, dangers to our academic institutions, and dangers to ourselves as educators. Although the author, Maryellen Wiemer, admits that occasional venting to a trusted colleagues helps us put things in perspective, she also points out the many harms that outright chronic complaining can do.I'm not going to summarize that article here —it's best read in it's entirety. However, I'd like toadd my two cents.After all, what's the good of having my own blog if I can't do that once in a while, eh?It took me decades of teaching in high school and college classrooms to fully realize what I think my role as an A&P professor should be. It's not solely to guide well-prepared, self-motivated, highly skilled students to the success that they can easily achieve without me. Sure, that's easy and mostly annoyance-free. But it can beawfully boring. What do they need me for, anyway? Not much.I came to discover that what really rocks my boat as a professor is when I canhelp a struggling student achieve even a very small success.When I can help a learning-disabled student find ways to "get it" when studying those messy histology ...
Source: The A and P Professor - Category: Physiology Authors: Source Type: blogs