INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Each month, WISH-TV features a local school district on “The Morning Bell,” a talk show highlighting new or exciting programs and accomplishments at Indiana schools.

Carmel Clay Schools hosted a work-based learning program Monday in which high school seniors complete community service assignments to earn credits.

Chard Reid, program coordinator at Carmel High School, and Amy Pollard, clinical nurse specialist at IU Health North Hospital, joined Daybreak to talk about the program.

The district says the work-based learning experience, or WBL, pairs a student with a local business that provides meaningful and authentic career experiences. The school, student, and workplace mentor create a learning plan to guide the student’s WBL experience. Through this experience, the student will develop specific career-related skills as well as a variety of employability skills necessary to succeed in today’s job market.

“Students go in for two stints and they do it for a full year. Most of our internships are paid — I would say about 90 percent,” Reid said. “And we actually have opportunities in almost 30 different career paths now. So we have nursing, which we’ll talk about today. But we also have accounting and automotive. We have construction, computer science, engineering. And the list goes on.”

To be eligible for work-based learning, students must be enrolled in a career pathway course.

Carmel High School currently offers 21 career paths. Each path offers a sequence of four courses, including a foundation course, two advanced courses, and a capstone course.

“It helps students develop professional skills that are so important for success in the workplace, no matter what field they’re in,” Reid said. “But I think a lot of our students still aren’t 100 percent sure what they want to do. So it’s an opportunity to test the waters and see if this career path is right for me.”

The program allows students to see and get a feel for a potential career years before most opportunities become available. Pollard says the nursing track allows students to learn to become certified nursing assistants.

“They’re learning about the role of a CNA in an acute care setting. We have four adult and inpatient units that they’re assigned to. So the medical unit, the post-op unit, the progressive care unit and the intensive care unit. They do everything our CNAs (we call them patient care assistants) do, but they do vital signs, patient hygiene, they learn the importance of mobilizing patients when they’re hospitalized,” Pollard said.

Students benefit from this experience and learn about other healthcare careers they may not be aware of.

“I think it helps students grow and it helps them figure out where they want to go in their career. But the flip side of that is that IU Health, we get the benefit of helping develop the next generation of nurses or healthcare workers,” Pollard said.

You can find more information about the Work-Based Learning Programme here.

(WISH-TV’s Hanna Mordoh, Amy Pollard, clinical nurse specialist at IU Health North Hospital and on-the-job learning program coordinator at Carmel Chard Reid)