Passion Project
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My freshman year of high school I got the opportunity to do a passion project through the RACE program I have been in throughout my high school career. To read more about the program click here or go to my extracurricular activities page. The project consisted of each student choosing a topic they want to do/learn about. Some people learned about dreams and others built wooden bikes. I choose to learn about the different types of therapy and different types of diagnoses for children born with disabilities. Throughout our project we had to keep a journal and write in it twice a week including updates on how we are doing and what we have learned so far. We each had to have a mentor and I chose the woman in charge of the JOY ministry at my church for special needs children and adults. On top of everything she does through my church she is also a physical therapist and works at the facility I have been interning at my senior year of high school. I went and shadowed her for a full day and took pictures and notes about the kids as well as their diagnoses and the therapy techniques and modalities I observed. To add to my project I read a book about occupational therapy for families with special needs. By the end of my project I had decided occupational therapy seemed to fit me better and planned to continue to pursue it as a possible career. At the end of our project we all had to present in a fair type of environment. We displayed our projects and our journals we wrote along with any items that we made or found. The picture above is of me on the night we presented along with some of the pictures I took, some therapy tools I saw being used, my journal, and the book I read.
Healthcare Pathway
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​Beginning in my sophomore year of high school I began the healthcare pathway at my school. A pathway consists of three courses in a specific career area. We offer many different types of pathways, but I was most interested in healthcare. The first and second classes of the pathway are mandatory before you can branch out into different types of healthcare pathways such as patient care, emergency medicine, and sports medicine. I took the first two classes: Introduction to Healthcare and Essentials to Healthcare my sophomore and junior year of high school. Introduction the Healthcare was mainly focused on ethics in the work place and starting to get an idea of what all careers are involved in healthcare. We did learn some basics such as the difference between a virus and bacteria and how healthcare is important in the real world such as natural disasters. In Essentials to Healthcare we learned about all the different body systems and different types of diseases and conditions. Now as a senior I am taking the sports medicine class to finish my pathway. I chose this class because it is about athletic training and talks about physical therapy. Although I am not interested in physical therapy it does work hand in hand with occupational therapy especially with special needs children and adults. The sports medicine class seemed to be the most relevant class my school offered based on what I plan to do with my career. The main things we have done in the class is learning and studying the joints and the muscles. The class has been a very helpful way for me to begin preparing for all the anatomy classes I will be required to take later in life. We have also learned how to tape an ankle.
Cereal Box Project
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​In my sophomore healthcare class, Introduction to Healthcare, we did a cereal box project. You had to pick one healthcare career you wanted to learn more about and were interested in pursuing. You had certain criteria you had to research about the career such as salary, education/certifications needed, what skills you need, and what the job consisted of on a daily basis. I picked an occupational therapist as my career and learned more about what my day would look like on a regular basis. Once you had all your information you were supposed to put it on a cereal box to present it. You can find all my research and what I put on my cereal box by clicking here. We then went around and looked at everyone's boxes to learn more about other careers that might interest us in the healthcare field.
Work Based Learning
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My junior year of high school I applied for and got accepted to the Work Based Learning program at my school. To read more about the program click here or go to my extracurricular activities page and scroll to the lower half of the page. I already had in mind that I wanted to intern at Walker Therapy where I had visited when I was a freshman for my Passion Project. I loved it so much and I knew it would give me what I was searching for in an internship. The last month of my summer before my senior year I went and began volunteering there. I loved it. I had decided my goal for my internship was to learn more about occupational, physical and speech therapy through a variety of modalities. Walker Therapy offers three types of therapy including hippotherapy, aquatic and land therapy. I spent a lot of time outside in the barn for the majority of my internship while intermittently going inside and shadowing other sessions. ​I have grown to understand how to work well with others and take care of horses too! I love my internship. Everyone I am surrounded by at work loves to help me enrich my knowledge base. Being an intern at Walker Therapy has introduced me to a wide variety of day to day workplace activities in the field I want to pursue. It has given me an advantage to my peers and also an experience and connections I will have forever. Being in Work Based Learning has gifted me with the opportunity of being immersed in the workplace and finding out for myself how much I still love and want to work in the field of either occupational or speech therapy for children with special needs.
Business Pathway
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​On top of completing a healthcare pathway I have also completed a business pathway. My freshman year I took Introduction to Business and Technology. I took it through the RACE program with every other RACE freshman in the same period. To learn more about the RACE program click here. The class consisted of three major projects. The first project was during the first semester which was called Marketplace. We were split up into groups of people we were not familiar with and each group was given a product/product type to market, produce, and sell. We had to make a business plan, professional business signs, a logo, a slogan, and job positions. We made prototypes and order forms for a marketplace night where friends, family, and the community could come and view all of our products and place orders. We had to make/fill all the orders and produce the product to perfection for our customers. We each offered customizable products and had to make each design utilizing Photoshop. The other project we worked on the first semester was a program called Toastmasters. It was a program which helped students become more comfortable with public speaking. Each student had to give two speeches in front of the class. The first speech was about introducing yourself and your interests and the second speech was about your family. The program helped us all get to know each other and become more comfortable talking to a crowd. The last project we did was the passion project. For the project we choose one topic or area to study or skill to learn and presented them at a fair type night. To read more about this please scroll to the top of the page and see Passion Project. The last two classes I took were similar. My sophomore year I took Business and Technology and my junior year I took Business Communications. In Business and Technology we worked on learning more about what a business really is. We learned vocabulary and ran basic simulations of what it is like to work in the business world. In my Business Communications class we learned how to make logos and slogans along with how to set up a business. We also did projects where we would have to look at data and chose the best options for a company. You can see a PowerPoint presentation a group of mine created by clicking here (Names have been removed for others confidentiality). It was a simulation of a company called Quick 'n Tastee. My group was selected by our teacher to present it to people from our county interested in expanding their Career Technical and Agricultural Education. Each of my business classes required me to become certified in a Microsoft Office software. I am now certified in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Career Related Coursework
