My first year in the teaching certificate program (TCP) has completed and it has given me multiple opportunities to grow as a teacher and progress towards the teaching and professional goals I set for myself before my residency year began. I was very fortunate to be able to interact with multiple learners with different educational backgrounds, experience, and learning needs. I utilized many of these experiences to grow my strengths and try to improve upon my weaknesses as an educator. Furthermore, I utilized the selective experiences to learn more about academia as a whole. I believe I truly used this program to its fullest to improve myself as an educator.

I set a teaching goal for myself this year to be able to adapt to the learners I taught. I was presented with a variety of learners. Some were highly educated health professionals while others did not possess a medical background and required a different level of communication. This forced me to be ready to change my teaching in an instance to be able to convey the important messages to those learners. In the best interest of the learner, I would change the way the material was delivered, the way that I assessed them, and how I responded to their performance on the assessment. Tailoring the learning experience to individual learning styles seemed to promote a greater retention of the information that was being presented to them. Throughout the experiences, it was important to utilize my objectives for the experience to guide the encounter. I wanted to make sure that I was adapting to exactly what the learner needed from the situation, but I did not want to lose the core purpose of the experience. Feedback was essentially in making sure that both the learner and myself were satisfied with the way that the learning experiences were progressing. This year has helped develop me into the adaptive teacher that I want to be.

During my midpoint, I reflected on how a topic discussion during an Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) best reflected how the TCP had developed my approach to teaching. I utilized the lessons learned during that experience to continue to grow my approach. Another great example of my approach to teaching on display was my teaching within the pediatric clinical skills elective that was taught to UAMS students at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Each month, one of four students rotated through a different unit in the hospital one day per week. During rounds, the students actively listened and asked questions to the pharmacist who was on rounds. I had the opportunity to round with three of the four students in three different areas of the hospital. This really tested my abilities as a teacher because not only was I teaching completely different students, but I was also in different areas of the hospital. I gave the same topic discussion about rapid sequence intubation to two different students in two different units, I remember reflecting afterwards, and realizing how much the topic had changed based on the student and the location. One student had a stronger background knowledge of medication mechanism of action that allowed for a more in depth discussion of the process. There was also practice variation between the two units that meant I needed to be able to explain the possible changes based upon which patient and which provider were involved in the intubation.

This approach to teaching did still have its shortcomings when it came to educating learners. There was an instance when I was counseling two caregivers for a patient about a medication device. One of the caregivers instantly understood the concept while the other was struggling a little bit. I changed the way that I was explaining the device to be easier to understand for the other caregiver. Immediately I could tell that this caused that caregiver to feel disappointed in themselves. It took a moment to rebuild rapport with this caregiver and regain their confidence in themselves. I made sure from this moment on to make sure that I was empathetic with each learner to assure that they were never discouraged by not being able to understand a concept at first.

Following the completion of this year, I truly believe that my teaching strengths carried me throughout a majority of my experiences and were a major player into why most of them were successful. Early in the year, I did not have a large amount of classroom teaching, but I was able to increase that load over the second half of the year and really test out my strengths while trying to improve my teaching weaknesses. I continued to try making most of my teaching experiences conversation based. It felt natural and really made sure that there was appropriate learner involvement. I enjoyed making the experiences active and allowing them to have a life of their own. I believe that my strength of being a conversationalist while teaching helped make the experience beneficial for many of my learners.

At midpoint, I discussed my ability to relate to learners with different baseline knowledge levels. I think that beyond that, this year I was able to find an ability to relate to learners will all kinds of different learning needs. I experienced interacting with people who learned visually, kinetically, and audibly. I made a concerted effort to make sure to think about how each learning style might need to have a concept explained to grasp the information. This also helped provide a greater understanding of the topic material that I was teaching. Furthermore, my learners also had different levels of interest in the material. This meant that sometimes I had to sacrifice material that was less important to make sure that the core concepts were delivered to those learners. I think my ability to relate to the learners and understand what they ultimately needed from the experience helped me the most in my encounters.

Confidence remained one of the major culprits in my teaching limitations, but I was able to grow and improve significantly. In the beginning of the year I was hesitant and often let other people answer questions or provide the education, if possible. I began to gain confidence in myself as a teacher as I started to trust the knowledge that I had. I believe this just came with continued practice and demonstration of my educational abilities. The longer the year progressed, the greater my confidence in myself became. I believe that I took the appropriate steps and utilized the TCP to its fullest in order to gain confidence in myself as an educator and provide a larger benefit to my learners. The continued involvement in preceptorship and didactic lectures will continue to grow my confidence in myself and my ability to teach .

When discussing assessment and feedback at midpoint, I mostly discussed my ability to assess learners and provide feedback to them. I was initially happy with my ability to assess my learners and I believe that I have honestly continued to progress in that aspect. I have been able to assess learners’ ability to retain information acutely as well as long-term. This ability helped me make sure that I was getting the most out of the learner and that they were getting the most out of the experience. Furthermore, I improved on my ability to tailor feedback to the learner so that they could make it applicable to whatever goals they wished to pursue. This required not only being able to appropriately assess the learner, but also understand their learning needs and objectives. I think that this approach made the learners value the encounter more than they initially did during the year.

Now that I have made it to the end of my TCP year, I believe that another major aspect of assessment and feedback that I was missing at midpoint was the ability to self-assess and accept feedback from learners. I gauged the success of my experiences using objective measures such as patient retention of knowledge. I was missing subjective information that is also important to the learner such as their perceived value of the encounter. Once I made this realization, I made it an effort to always make sure that the learner was providing me with some kind of feedback within the experience and that I was also reflecting during and afterwards so that I could continually improve my teaching. I believe this provided a greater sense of connection between the learner and myself and developed trust. As the learners began to trust me further, it became easier to disseminate the information.

The goals I set at the beginning of the year were essentially my guide throughout the year on choosing which opportunities I wanted to pursue and how I would want those experiences to play out. My goals were having clear, measurable objectives, providing quality verbal and written feedback, and adapting to each learner's needs within each learning session and throughout various learning sessions if there is a longitudinal experience. I had specific plans I utilized to meet these goals, improve upon them, and reattempt, if necessary. I believe that the TCP and the plan I set out helped me achieve each of these goals. I intend on continuing to progress further towards these goals as I continue my academic career. These goals were obtainable over one year, but still provide room to improve further. I made sure that the plan I implemented at the beginning of the TCP was followed and adjusted as necessary to meet my teaching goals.

I continued to make it a prior to set expectations for my learners, but also to determine what their expectations for the experience were, as well. I wanted to make sure that not only was I delivering the core concepts, but also that it was overall beneficial. The use of informal and formal learning objectives both continued to drive the overall concept of each learning experience. I made sure I had clear objectives that in my head that I wanted to achieve and that I discussed them, when appropriate, with the learners. A change I made from midpoint to the completion of my first year in the TCP was the addition of not only using my feedback to the learners, but also seeking continued feedback from them. This allowed me to adapt within the encounter to assure that they were appropriately learning, and enjoying the overall experience.

I believe the methods and strategies that I implemented in order to achieve my teaching goals were successful in achieving these goals in an introductory, first-year fashion. I think that as I grow as an educator, so too will my goals, both new and old. I was able to figure out through trial and error and some thoughtful changes exactly how to adapt the experience when there are multiple learners. It was additionally difficult because there could be different levels of background knowledge or even different interests in learning in general. I relied heavily upon experienced educators throughout the year in order to provide mentorship and guidance along the way. I believe this accompanied with gained experience allowed me to effectively progress towards my teaching goals.