Thursday, Oct. 7 associate professor of occupational therapy (OT) Dr. Judy Beck Ericksen was awarded the Kreider Prize for Teaching Excellence for 2020-2021. She has been teaching at Elizabethtown College for 15 years. 

The event took place in the Susquehanna Room beginning with a reception at 7:00 p.m. The main event of the evening began 30 minutes later.

Ericksen was presented her award and then given the floor to talk to the gathered crowd. The crowd was made up of her friends and family, colleagues and students. Ericksen started by talking about her initial reaction to the news of receiving the award, as well as reading the Campus News description.

Then she went into her philosophy of teaching. 

She sees education as intervention composed of three components. The first piece is the content. Nearly every classroom Ericksen has been in both as a student and professionally have been teacher-centered, where the teacher is seen as the expert. One day, a student asked Ericksen how the concept the class was discussing connected to psychology. 

Not knowing the answer, she asked the student, “Well what do you think?”

Ericksen said she would investigate and get the answer for the student.

“I became comfortable with the process of not knowing everything and learning together. You don’t have to be an expert, we can learn together,” Ericksen said.

From that one interaction with her student, she started leading her classroom student-centered and found it to be working a lot better. She refers to this approach to teaching as the flipped classroom because it is focused around the students and the teacher learning. The teacher is a facilitator as compared to the all-knowing expert. 

Ericksen remarked she has been noticing many more student-centered classrooms in recent years than there had been when she was growing up.

The second component is to be there in the moment. 

“I want [my students] to know I see them as competent, regardless of grades. I see them as they are, including who they are outside the classroom,” Ericksen said.

Being present also means knowing when to push the students and when to encourage them. It is all about listening to them and their needs. It’s important to be alert and aware of students’ actions at all times to prevent a crisis, Ericksen explained, reflecting on her own experience.

The last piece is the relationship between students and the teacher. Students learn better when they have a connection with the teacher, even if the content does not interest them. The students become more engaged when they have a good relationship with the teacher. 

“Maybe it’s about what we make people feel, not what we tell them,” Ericksen said.

At the end of the event, there was time for questions. 

When asked what advice she would give to a new teacher, Ericksen said, “Teaching can be so isolating. It’s so easy to get caught up in lesson plans and evaluations. The more you get out and see, the better, and you’ll find there’s lots of people there to help you.”

Ericksen had mentioned during her lecture, she spent many hours observing classrooms with her work as an OT. She knew in order to become a better OT, she had to be in a classroom. There was a time she wanted to be a special education teacher, and even got her master’s degree in special  education.

A few others asked questions to clarify what Ericksen had said in her lecture. The event concluded and many of the attendees came up to congratulate her on receiving this honor.

Living with her philosophy education as intervention, Ericksen said, “I still have lessons to learn, and thankfully I have students to help me learn.”