Transitioning from RT to Educator

Transitioning from Radiology Techinologist to Educator

Going From the Medical Field to the Classroom

What possible challenges do you foresee when transitioning from a practicing RT to an educator? If you are already an educator, what did you find particularly difficult or eye-opening when you changed paths?

I recently transitioned from being a full time radiology technologist to being a part time instructor and a part time radiology technologist. It was not something that I had planned to do at this point in my career. I was interested in teaching but it was something I thought was going to be something I did when I had more experience with in the field.

However, when I was working full time as a radiology technologist the that I was hospital working in began to take in student technologists and at some point during their time at our clinical site, my manager had made me a clinical educator for the students. After a year of working with the students, they made to convinced me to start teaching at their school.

The main issue for me when adjusting to actually teaching the students instead of just coaching them, was the change of mentally being able to be their friend to having more authority over them. For me, it was definitely mentally daunting at first having to adapted to being in a more professional teaching environment and learning the boundaries of having to be in that relationship. I even reached out to some of my old radiology teachers to see how they managed teaching and their own transitions.

Another thing that took me by surprise is just how different teaching in the actual program is. I went to school in a hospital based program and it is completely different from a schooled based radiology program. Trying to understand how to operate with in this type of program has been eye opening in the realization of how different the requirements are.

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Student Motivation

Discuss ways to motivate students in higher education. What works for you? Do students in professional programs such as radiography really NEED motivation since they have already chosen a career path? Why or why not?

When it comes to motivation I do not think it matters if your within a medical program or not. Having a lack of motivation does not mean that you lack determination to finish your program or degree. Everyone no matter the level of education they are trying to go for needs a little motivation at some part during their education. People get discharged at bad grades or not feeling at their best at some point and having a chosen career path does not mean that you immune to that feeling.

Ways that can help with that I have use and been recommend, one use a study groups, having a group of your peers around as you are studying can help a person feel more motivate. Having a group of your peers around you can help encourage a person to keep going and push to you to make sure that you want to finish whatever portion of the schooling that you are at. The second that has been said to help encourage students is something called body double. It is where either through a video/live stream or with an actual physical person, just working around you. It is literally just a person being around you with their own work that they are doing. Then the student slowly starts working hopefully on their own homework. I have done this before and have found it beneficial and it really help me stay motivated on what I needed to work on.