Hillsborough County schools' career education programs fuse academics with work skills. By MARLENE SOKOL, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, October 2, 2011. Mariann Byrd passed her first Advanced Placement test as a freshman at Spoto High School. She plans to pass another this year and more after that for college credit and a jump start on her career — in costume design. "I'd like to stay in Florida, but if I have to move to New York, that's okay," said Mariann, who sewed dresses for the prom, her eighth-grade dance and numerous contests. "I've never had so much fun." Mariann, 15, could be a poster child for that flip side of the album that is public schooling — career and technical education. Another would be 17-year-old Juan Montoya, once a failing student at Alonso High School and now poised to leave Bowers-Whitley Career Center as an industry-certified automotive technician.
"The flaw, and I think it is a flaw, is when we tell all of our students, 'You're going to a four-year university,' " said Pam Peralta, director of Career, Technical and Adult Education for the Hillsborough County School District. Often, "They can't get in. They can't afford it." But from a career program "you can certainly go from a high school to a high-tech center to a community college to a four-year university," she said. "There are pathways to get there." Learn more…
Nurses to the rescue. By Ravi Parikh, special to the Times
In Print: Sunday, October 2, 2011. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. In medical school we learn about countless diseases, medications, tests and procedures so that one day we will be the captains of the health care ship, armed with the tools to battle complex illnesses. It's an impossible task to cram into even three to seven years of residency, let alone four years of medical school. Now that I am in my third year of medical school and working full time in the hospital, I respect the skills and knowledge of the hospital work force more than ever. But please don't think that it is only the physicians that I admire. Perhaps the most glaring observation from my third-year clerkship has been just how vital the allied work force — particularly the nursing staff — is to running a hospital.
If you're a healthy person who only rarely goes to the doctor, you might think of the nurse as the friendly person who weighs you and takes your blood pressure before summoning the physician. But in the hospital, nurses are absolutely essential to your well-being, and even your life. Nurses are the ones who reconcile patients' expansive medication list, avoiding potentially fatal interactions. They prepare operating rooms hours before surgery, ensuring that delicate procedures don't come crashing to a halt for want of a specific kind of suture. Learn more…
