Today was my last day of on-boarding one of our new volunteer chaplain associates.  We spent most of our time teaching the process for entering visits made into our medical information management program.  The student did very well and practiced a high degree of diligence and effort at making sure what was entered was correct.

I tried to remember how I felt when I was learning how to use the program.  I remember feeling rushed and not liking being watched at the keyboard even though I knew it was necessary.  To take her feelings into account I told her to let me know if we were going too fast.  I also paced myself by speaking slowly and watching what she was doing so that my instructions were not several steps ahead of where she was on the screen.  As she gained speed then I would leave sitting next to her to let her make the entry and then have her let me know when she had entered the information.  Then I would check it over before it was saved.  This was good because she would think through the process by herself and yet I was able to make sure before the entry was saved it was correct.

I would like to think that my centering myself on how I felt as a student helped make me a better teacher.  This is just one example of how emotions from one experience can help us in another situation down the road.  Emotions are good teachers if we use them well!