As the country shifts its attention more to health and fitness every year, the younger generation is taking notice. Today’s students are expected to meet the ever-increasing demand for physical trainers, fitness professionals, athletic trainers, safety oversight professionals and others as time marches on and new positions are available.
Leave it to the forward-thinking minds of New Albany to start a program in which students can learn versatile skills and information that will prepare them to enter this expanding field.
New Albany-Plain Local Schools’ partnership with Eastland-Fairfield Career & Technical Schools enables the district to provide interested students with the opportunity to learn not only about career paths, but about how they can live a healthy lifestyle for themselves.
Tiffanie Jones, a sports medicine instructor at Eastland-Fairfield, oversees the program and has shaped it to fit with student interests.
“(Students) are naturally interested in sports already, They’re naturally interested in health and well-being already,” Jones says. “If you can find a topic like sports medicine where you can fit those topics together, it kind of makes it the ideal program to be in.”
Jones teaches 19 juniors from New Albany High School, in the first year of a two-year program that will host juniors and seniors in separate classes starting in 2023. Juniors learn nutrition and wellness at the start of the class, and move on to strength and conditioning in the spring.
At the end of the first semester, students will know many of the formal processes of the health care profession. They learn how to perform preparticipation physical examinations, deliver diagnoses, explore career paths, document medical records and more.
They learn tactical medical skills along the way. These include how to tape an ankle, how to fit crutches and helmets, how to spine board patients, and how to earn certification to perform CPR.
Jones wants to be sure students leave the program with the skills and information that they need, regardless of the health-related path they choose to take on.
“My hope is that these students can take the knowledge that they’re gaining here and, whether
they pursue higher education or not … understand these principles of health and wellness for themselves in their daily lives,” she says.
Careers in athletic fitness and health care often require post-graduate training and degrees. Jones knows her classes will give students a head start in understanding the basics of what they will learn later.
As school administrators work with students to provide courses they are interested in, they have found that students are taking these courses with vigor and dedicated interest.
“You’ve got students who are really curious about these topics, and they’re passionate about them,” says Patrick Gallaway, director of communications for New Albany-Plain Local. “We’re always trying to find out what we can offer to these students that could still fit on their traditional college prep, or a career they can start right out of high school.”
The program gives students plenty of hands-on experience with fitness professionals, including pairing students with New Albany’s athletic training staff who are employed by Nationwide Children’s Hospital, as well as working with personal trainers at local fitness centers.
From on-field athletic trainers to warehouse safety oversight, to police, SWAT, and fire safety instructors, students who make it through this burgeoning program enter their post-secondary lives with the tools and wherewithal to help supplement the gaps in the health and fitness workforce.
Tyler Kirkendall is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at tkirkendall@cityscenemediagroup.com.
