HOYA 2 Aug/Sept Article
I am very proud of each of our HOYA 2 students; they all passed their state CNA exam on their first try. As we only meet on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons, we haven't had too much time in class, but our students have been discussing their internships. Many students were busy over their summer break, working and getting some of their required 255 total internship hours, though not all students have their internship hours locked down just yet. Students have chosen internships at a hospital, several nursing homes, an assisted living facility, and a veterinarian clinic. As they learned in HOYA 1, healthcare is not just limited to CNAs, physicians, or nursing; veterinary medicine is definitely an important career path in the field. They will be building upon the skills they learned in HOYA 1, as well as working on their employability skills.
We also spent some time discussing what it takes to earn college credit, breaking down the in-class and out-of-class time expectations, from a single-credit course all the way up to a full-time load of around 16 credit hours. This discussion will serve our students well as they head into their college careers, giving them a realistic sense of the time commitment involved.
In the coming months, a different pair of students will research and present a bulletin board on a healthcare concern or disease relevant to all CareerTEC students. This initiative is an essential part of their curriculum, allowing students to creatively express their knowledge and insights while engaging and teaching the community of other CareerTEC students, as well as followers of our HOYA Facebook page. Stay tuned for the unveiling of their work and the valuable insights it will bring! Our first bulletin board of the year was a fun one with the entire class working on it. HOYA 2 welcomed our current HOYA 1 students with a "What I Wish I Knew" board, sharing advice and encouragement as the new students begin their own CNA journey.
Students will also be beginning their journey into Medical Terminology, tackling small snippets of prefixes, suffixes, and word parts for their weekly quizzes. As they say, the best way to eat an elephant (or in this case, Medical Terminology) is one bite at a time! An essential part of their Medical Terminology curriculum will be a year-long Capstone project, where students explore 12 different body systems, choosing 2-3 diseases pertinent to each system and compiling 15 medical terms related to it, complete with diagrams and pictures.