This project is a culminating application for a community of students who have spent three years acquiring knowledge and developing skills through a true integration of all academic disciplines and clinical experience in health care. This project benefits approximately fifty students per year. Among other benefits, the project improves student learning by allowing students to extend their learning beyond the classroom into the community and outward to the greater society. Additionally because of academic integration, key concepts are reinforced from class to class to class. Because of the structure of our program, students and teachers establish partnerships in learning.
Teachers present themselves as facilitators of learning rather than dispensers of knowledge.
Students are helped to develop their ability to identify, problem-solve, and influence real change. They make connections between school processes and governmental and industry processes and show direct connections between personal actions and societal changes. They become self-motivated because they are involved in examining services that will have a direct effect on them. Students are involved in goal-setting, management of finances, time, and human resources. They co-create skill standards that represent a level of performance commensurate with entry level into college or industry.