Hospital beds, wheelchairs and medical equipment usually bring to mind images of hospitals and emergency rooms, not high school.

Standing in the certified nursing lab at North Bend High School is like being in a clinic, with stretchers, old hospital beds, latex gloves and diagnostic equipment spread throughout the room. But dummies are the patients.

According to Karleen Burgett, North Bend's work-to-school coordinator, the Certified Nursing Assistant program has graduated 150 students into the health care field permanently. Tabitha Cook, a 16-year-old junior and program graduate, said her career plans changed completely after she started the CNA program.

“Going from wanting to be a hairdresser to a nurse is a good change,” she said with a shy smile, shaking her blond hair out of her eyes.

Work-to-school programs and vocational classes are offered by a number of South Coast schools, but it's not just home economics and woodshop anymore. High schools are now embracing practical programs that either lead directly into paying positions following graduation, or offer credit at Southwestern Oregon Community College and state universities.

In addition to metal shop and woodshop, North Bend offers classes in business, sports marketing and entrepreneaurship, and a cadet-teaching program that puts students interested in childhood education into elementary school classrooms.

The CNA program adds 88 hours of classroom work and 88 hours of clinical experience, which the students serve at Hearthside Rehabilitation, to the standard high school class load. Students are granted eight college credits, a health credit and an elective toward their high school degree requirements.

“We do it all in one trimester. You can only have 10 students to one instructor, so we wanted to offer it as frequently as possible,” Burgett said. “I want the students who graduate from North Bend High School to have all the same opportunities as a cosmopolitan student from Portland.”

Although students clearly do a lot of work to get through the classes in one term, completing the required service hours and passing the state exam to receive a certificate of nursing, Cook said the CNA instructor, Wandah Fowler, deserves all the credit.

Fowler, a nurse at Baycrest Village, tried to make the process fun. Program graduate Sara Marroquin, 16, said Fowler let the students practice on one another and brought them fast food on test days - to keep their strength up.

Facing the prospect of changing soiled sheets and bathing patients during the student's service hours at Hearthside, tested their will and fortitude to be nursing assistants. But the hard work that accompanies being a CNA fails to surprise after a while, said 17-year-old CNA graduate Karry Curtis.

“After you clean so many briefs and change so many sheets, things don't phase you any more,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You get used to it.”

Forensics and forestry

Students in Myrtle Point and Powers are out in the woods learning how to fall trees and clear land for replanting.

“It's a forestry program, which is all-encompassing for natural resource management,” John Martz, the forestry program instructor, said. “We cover everything science related, and we're very hands on. We go out into the forest and do a lot of practical application.”

The students recently assisted the city of Myrtle Point by removing some diseased myrtle trees from Rotary Park. The class project taught students to fell trees safely, while providing community service.

This type of program is especially important to small rural communities, like Myrtle Point, Coquille and Powers, that are dependent on the lumber and forest industry. Students in Myrtle Point frequently go directly into the workforce, and giving students the marketable skills in high school is very important to help students find good jobs, Martz said.

“A lot of the kids in my program probably will not go on to higher education,” he said. “But we really strive to have kids come out of this program and have a little money to go out to a two-year or four-year school, to give them the opportunity to choose additional education.”

Tyler Nay, 18, a senior at Myrtle Point Junior/Senior High School, said he entered the program because he had already decided he would pursue a career that allowed him work outdoors. But he didn't expect the forestry program to give him the opportunities to do so much, he added.

“Up at our land lab, we cut trails and build bridges. That's what I enjoy the most, constructing things out there. I'm going to Oregon State to study civil and forest engineering, a dual degree, and this program gives me a head start,” Nay said. “It also has a pretty good scholarship, and opens up the opportunities to other scholarships, too.”

The scholarship opportunities will help Nay start his studies at OSU, but it's the opportunities for career experience that make a difference for many of the students, he said.

Teaching subjects such as math and sciences, is easier when students have a point of reference, Martz said. Regardless of whether or not students enter forestry as a career, using hands-on experience to learn geometry, botany or herbology can help students excel.

Martz and other school officials have worked with local companies to find summer jobs and internships for students to put their training and experience to good use. Nay is applying for a summer position with Roseburg Forest Products, and may try to sign up for a program letting students participate in a state forest sale.

Although the forestry program is only one of many opportunities for high school students, Martz says the unexpected results of providing vocational training are things students may not learn through simple reading, writing and arithmetic.

“There's so many good things for the kids that can come from these programs. It teaches you life skills and a work ethic, and so many things that content classrooms can't do,” Martz said. “If you can work with a kid's attitude, you can affect about 90 percent of the things they will do in life.”