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Teaching Nursing Assistants, Our Frontline Healthcare Workers
For one memorable year, I taught full-time at a school for certified nursing assistants, or CNAs. My students, ranging in age from sixteen to sixty, came through job corps or workforce training, with a few taking the course as required training before launching a healthcare career. Many were family caregivers with hands-on expertise and their own ways of doing things. My students’ unifying quality was the desire to help others in a direct and immediate way.
They were an empathetic group, helping each other to succeed in skills’ lab, encouraging those with tenuous ESL skills, and even expressing concern during my menopausal hot flashes. “Are you alright, Miss?” I often heard. I complimented them on their observation skills, and assured them that my bright-purple face and profuse sweating did not mean I was going to die.
My students had varying educational backgrounds, some with GEDs, some with advanced degrees. College professors and high-school dropouts, police officers and juvenile delinquents, English teachers and recent immigrants from West Africa shared the classroom and the afternoon lab that followed. Teaching is a constantly evolving, responsive process, and I employed a variety of learning styles and techniques. At the end of our short two weeks together, there was a test — and my goal was for every…
