Shirley the Master Teacher

Hi All,

Just returned from New Orleans, where Shirley orchestrated a masterful and lively session (lively at a research conference, no less!) She hooked me into presenting with her at the Faculty Research Conference hosted by the National League for Nursing (the organization advancing faculty development and excellence in nursing education). The session title was "EVATEC: Transforming the Classroom to a Pedagogy of Engagement". EVATEC is the model that she has developed and "branded" and it really does work. I was her protoge on this session. (I only used profanity once during our preparatory work, telling her to "do the f---n" thing yourself!" when I didn't like her telling me what to do during my part of the presentation. She gave it back to me one time too.)

She submitted it as a poster presentation but they invited her to present at a breakout session instead. That was quite an honor and she did a marvelous job, with me there as her token nurse educator....which she didn't really need. But they loved her and got a kick out of us as a "sister act". She wrote a manuscript that will be published in their journal, and also a full White Paper on the topic and her model which will be posted on her website. It's the best synthesis I've seen so far on the theories behind the new learning paradigm (in contrast to the older, more traditional instruction-based paradigms).

I hope you read the White Paper. My two cents are in there too, but she was the masterful creator of the masterpiece.

We had a great time in North Carolina with Adam, Lexi, and the beautiful Laila!

Love,
jb