Dental Assistance (Dental Surgery) I Started Out
I started out as a dental assistant at 19, then became an instructor, and was promoted to a program director before opening my own teaching program in 2000. I work part time at a community college and teach my dental auxiliary courses on the weekends. In that way, I have an extensive background of practice, reflection, observation, and application that is connected to my job. Since I really have two jobs – dentistry and teaching – and the essay wishes me to employ just one, I will focus on the overarching one: dentistry.
Note that these four terms - practice, reflection, observation, and application - represent those used by David Kolb's experiential learning theory and indeed my essay format will be designed according to Kolb's theory so as to best illustrate the contributions of experience to my dentistry background.
Kolb considers experience a source of learning and cites four elements that contribute to experiential learning. These are: Concrete experience (doing); Reflective observation (observing); Abstract conceptualization (thinking, generalization); and Active experimentation (planning, testing and application). The essay will connect my experience to each of these four phases in turn.