LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Fairdale High School junior Megan Jacobs has had to recruit skeptical family members to help her hone the skills she's learned in August King's patient care technician courses since Jefferson County Public Schools transitioned to nontraditional instruction in April.
She's taken some in her family through range of motion exercises and fitted her father with diabetic socks as part of the at-home assignments King has given to her students.
"I have to convince my family to let me practice on them, which they're not always up to," Jacobs said. "But they're pretty good sports overall."
King's 120 students and thousands of others enrolled in Academies of Louisville programs throughout JCPS have had to adapt from hands-on learning environments at their schools to developing their skills from home as schools across Kentucky ceased in-person instruction to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Teachers like King, an instructor in Fairdale's Patient Care Technician Academy, also had to quickly acclimate themselves to distance learning.
King has turned her children into patients for video demonstrations and used household supplies in her lessons instead of the medical equipment in her classroom.
In one video, for example, King used a newspaper and duct tape to fashion a brace for a broken wrist and used a T-shirt to create a sling. She showed students how to make sure they hadn't made their patients' braces too tight and cut off circulation, directing them to check for movement and warmth in their patients' fingers.
"We made it work instantaneously," King said. "It was super fun to produce these videos and get them to the kids."
But not every student could produce the same sorts of videos to show their grasp of techniques, so King said she had to be "very, very, very flexible" on accepting completed skill-based assignments through various methods, such as Zoom conferences, photos, drawings, emails and text messages.
That allowed her students "to show me that they understood the work in whatever way that they could at what time was convenient," she said.
So far, she's seen "an absolutely overwhelming display of creativity" from her students. To show the proper way to pack wounds, for example, one used her mother's old birthday cake while another used a watermelon.
"They had a lot of fun," said King, who used a cantaloupe in her video on packing wounds. "It was creative, but they understood the basic skills whether or not they had the right equipment."
Other teachers in Academies of Louisville programs have also found unique ways to present material that's typically taught through hands-on instruction.
Brenda Pirtle, director of transition readiness at JCPS, said Iroquois High plumbing instructor Jason Disney partnered with Tom Drexler Plumbing, Air & Electric to record a video at a customer's home that showed students how to assess and fix a plumbing issue.
Mark LaMaster, Fern Creek High's fire science teacher, worked with the Fern Creek Fire Department to create a fire safety video and training module for his students.
That's not the same as the hands-on training students like Fern Creek senior Elena Lugo were accustomed to before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Students were able to work in Fern Creek Fire Department's smoke house, hunting for dummies through training smoke in small groups while wearing firefighter gear. They also got to fight actual fires that had been set in another training building, learning how to open pumps and water down blazes from afar.
COVID-19 put a stop to such experiences for students like Lugo, who plans to enter the military after she graduates but is also considering a career as a firefighter.
"We only went twice this year," she said.
Since then, Lugo says her class has focused on other lessons, such as how 911 calls are dispatched.
Learning at the Fern Creek Fire Department is a major aspect of her Academies of Louisville experience that she's missed since JCPS stopped offering in-person instruction.
"We would legit train as a firefighter," she said.
Some students, however, are still getting hands-on training in their career pathways through apprenticeships. King said four of her students, two juniors and two seniors, are currently working toward their nurse aide certifications with Trilogy Health Services, which specializes in senior living communities.
One student recounted to King how some patients didn't understand why their families couldn't visit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think they're getting a real taste of the real world and the empathy and compassion that's needed in health care," King said.
As the school year draws to a close for JCPS next week, Pirtle is planning a summer enrichment program centered around career and technical education.
Students will get a chance to learn skills like how to build robots and perform CPR, she said.
"I'm actually holding a film fest virtually with business partners coming on board to support that and to be our audience when we're finished," Pirtle said.
The district is also producing videos for seniors to help them transition to life after high school, including tips on how to prepare resumes and dress for job interviews, she said.
The sudden shift to nontraditional instruction for JCPS has given King new perspective on one aspect of medicine that's been thrust into the limelight during the global health crisis: telehealth.
"It's going to be our future, and I need to incorporate more telehealth education in the curriculum from ninth grade up," she said.
She also wants to allow her students to use the virtual space to demonstrate their aptitude in medical care.
Some of her students who don't like demonstrating in front of their classmates have blossomed with the shift to nontraditional instruction, she said.
"They were producing these incredible skills presentations, and they were having fun," King said. "You could see that they were having fun, more so than I saw in the classroom sometimes. For some of these kids it's been a real plus."
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