By Kim Underwood
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools
Last week, students at Walkertown Middle School spend a day out in the community learning more about the world of work. Their final stop brought them to Kernersville Medical Center.
There, the 26 students in Charlotte Waddell and Kathy Ford's classes broke into smaller groups to learn about such procedures as cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, checking blood pressure and inserting a breathing tube.
With respiratory therapist Karen Grice talking him through the process, seventh-grader Matthew Peddycord carefully followed all the steps required to insert a breathing tube down the throat of a practice dummy. That tricky manuever successfully executed, he hooked the dummy up to a breathing apparatus. Grice congratulated him, telling him that he was the first student to make it all the way through the procedure without a misstep and that, if he wanted to become a respiratory therapist some day, he has what it takes. Hearing that felt good.
"I learned how to do that pretty well," he said.
Matthew already had working with cars or trucks on his list of potential careers. The positive experience and the praise prompted him to add respiratory therapist to his list. "It seems pretty fun," he said.
As part of the Students@Work program, about 125 students from five middle schools - Walkertown, Flat Rock, Southeast, the Downtown School and Jefferson - visited a number of businesses on Wednesday. By the time the Walkertown students arrived at the medical center, they had already been to Palenque Mexican Grill, Parks Chevrolet and the research and development department at Volvo Trucks North America. Students from the other schools went to banks and credit unions, restaurants, a grocery store, the Winston-Salem Dash baseball team and television station WXII.
"The purpose of this is for students to get a first-hand look at some of the career opportunities that are available," said Shirley Bynum, the school system's Career Technical Education Co-director.
Cheryl Cox, the school system's School-To-Career Coordinator, added that such experiences also give students a fuller picture of what they need to concentrate on in school to reach their career goals.
When the day began, seventh-grader Edgar Jimenez was already interested in working on cars for a living. The visit to the body shop at Parks Chevrolet gave him a much better understanding of just how much time and work goes into fixing up a car, he said.
It had been a valuable day all around, Edgar said. "It really shows the students how hard you need to work."
Abigail Dorough was particularly excited to be at the medical center because she wants to be a pediatrician and, during the time when some of the people who work at the medical center talked about their jobs, she asked a number of questions.
The Kernersville Medical Center people kept it light. Jo Crowley, the registered nurse who serves as the senior director of patient services, got a laugh when she asked students whether they knew that "acute" means "other than a cute girl or a cute boy."
Crowley and the others also made the point that a medical center can also provide satisfying work for people in such non-medical positions as computer operators and programmers and heating and air conditioner technicians.
After the day was done, said Ford, a Business Education teacher, said, "The students learned a great deal and had a lot of fun doing it."
Waddell, a Technology Education teach, said, "Many of the students who attended stated that it was the best field trip they had been on ever."
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