My philosophy of teaching is that individuals bring their unique styles, skills, and
preferences to learning experiences and their evaluation experiences. It is incumbent on teachers
to understand that reality and to try to understand their students’ differences and similarities.
Using that knowledge, they can approach the student or class with options for lesson plans,
discussions, and testing.

For nursing students (or new employees on nursing units), I feel it is important to
evaluate how they learn before I can effectively teach or test them on anything. When precepting
nursing students or new employees in our department, I prioritize time for a conversation about
their learning style before we begin. It is important to know how an individual learns best for the
process to be successful. I engage in ongoing evaluation of preceptees based on how and what
types of questions they ask, how they listen to answers, and how they interact with patients. I
also make evaluations based on their response if they discover they have made a mistake, and
how they receive corrections.

It is important to understand the difficulties inherent in becoming a beginner as an adult,
as nursing students necessarily do. Teachers need to understand that even though classes are
taught in a recognizable language, nursing terminology is foreign. Helping students feel
comfortable with asking questions goes a long way towards welcoming student nurses into the
family of nursing.