MNPS program launches students into the workforce
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) - Metro Nashville Public Schools is opening the doors for students to get a head start on pursuing jobs.
The Academies and Pathways program is helping students get hands-on experience.
Students at James Lawson High School have four pathways to choose from:
- Art and design and communication
- Business and hospitality
- Engineering
- Health sciences
Katherine Stockton is a senior at the school with big dreams of working in the healthcare field.
Stockton, along with dozens of other students, are learning inside the classroom and outside at clinics throughout Nashville.
“I work about 35 to 40 hours per pay period and over winter break,” said Stockton.
Even though Stockton is still in high school she’s getting paid to work in healthcare.
Laura Hickman is the clinical instructor of the program at the school.
She said students start the program sophomore year.
“We start in our 10th-grade year with health science education,” Hickman said. “Our 11th grade they take either their diagnostic pathway or their therapeutic pathway. Then their senior year, they take with a clinical internship, or they take the EKG certification class.”
Hickman said the school partnered with local healthcare facilities, like HCA, that give the students hands-on experiences.
“They take it into the real world. They know that they have to have good communication skills, they have to have good bedside manners. They have to be able to communicate with co-workers.”
Students are learning about trauma care, CPR, and even how to deliver a baby.
Both the diagnostic medicine and medical therapeutics pathways provide students with the opportunity to receive a certification to work once they graduate and work with their medical partners.
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