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Student energy charms hospital as BOCES program moves to Harris STORY AND PHOTOS

BY KATHY DALEY

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atskill Regional Medical Center is delighted and BOCES is overjoyed. As for the teenagers at the heart of all the enthusiasm, these 85 students from all over the county are thrilled to find themselves fully immersed in the healthcare field, right at their own local hospital.

“It's really helpful to be here and really interesting,” said PLEASE SEE HARRIS, 4S

On the new fifth floor suite at Catskill Regional Medical Center, Monticello High School junior Siniah Sealy works on appropriate patient care by use of a mannequin.

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BOCES' health occupations programs invite students to learn accountability, responsibility and an unshakeable work ethic as they acquire knowledge and skill in the medical field. From left, In their white lab coats, are New Visions Program students Bailey Yewchuk, Sarah Grodin, Adriana Bracey and Katy Decker.

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Siniah Sealy, a junior from Monticello High School. “I want to become a labor and delivery nurse, and I can take in so much knowledge.”

Elizabeth Granados, also a Monticello junior, values the up-close contact with medical staff as she studies the lifesaving work that goes on daily at the hospital.

“Today, we were in the emergency room,” Granados said. “Next week, we'll be in the physical therapy department. Being in the hospital allows us to see nurses and how they act. We learn how to carry ourselves properly.”

For years, Catskill Regional has served as a clinical site for BOCES students exploring the health profession. But in November, Sullivan BOCES and the hospital launched a fifth floor learning suite specifically for both classroom learning and lab work. A six-bed patient care area

SULLIVAN COUNTY DEMOCRAT

allows students to practice tasks like things when you experience it fully.”

New Visions students, all of whom making beds and assisting patient wear white lab coats, recently invesmannequins.

Overall, BOCES' varied Career & tigated the body's cardiovascular Technical Education programs system and also dissected an eyeinvite high school students to ball. “It's so cool to see the different explore professions as they prepare parts, the iris, the lens, the optic nerve,” said Adriana Bracey of Monfor work or college.

In its Health Occupations pro- ticello High.

Fellow Monticello-ite Bailey Yewgram, high school juniors engage in an overall study of the theory and chuk is looking forward to viewing skills related to the health profes- an autopsy. “I want to be a medical sion. Then, in senior year, “Health examiner. I'll go to a four-year colOCC” students have several choices. They may opt to train as certified nursing assistants. Or they can choose the Allied Health Program, which provides advanced study of vari- Jonathan Schiller ous health occupations. Hospital President | Finally, the senior-year program New Vision Health offers an academically rigorous course for col- lege, then med school, then law lege-bound students with an overall school,” she said.

Sarah Grodin, also from Monticelhigh school average of 85 or more and whose Regents scores are 80 or lo, will enter West Point Military above in Living Environment, Alge- Academy after she graduates in bra, Geometry and Algebra June. Grodin hopes to serve with the Army Medical Corps and voiced her 2/Trigonometry.

“One hundred percent of New delight with interactions with staff Visions students go on to college,” at Catskill Regional, a sentiment said teacher Catherine Freda, a reg- echoed by those at the top.

“We love having BOCES here,” said istered nurse who served in the ICU Hospital President Jonathan for a decade.

Now that the whole program is Schiller. “Where there is learning positioned at the hospital, summer and growth, there is the key to a work opportunities abound for the healthy community.”

Rolland Bojo, Vice President for students, Freda explained, and the hospital staff visit frequently to Patient Services, agreed.

“Having the kids here will pay divspeak about potential job opportuidends for us and the county,” Bojo nities.

New Visions student Katy Decker said. “We struggle to find workers all from the Liberty school district will the time, as lab technicians, as nursstudy at Elmira College next year as ing assistants. If we can help our a nursing major. “I want to have my county's children see opportunities, own practice someday,” she said. we all benefit. And the energy of the “Being here at the hospital makes it kids makes us smile every day. This real, all day. It's much easier to learn has been phenomenal for us.”

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‘We love having BOCES here,...Where there is learning and growth, there is the key to a healthy community.’

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Where kids put on goggles and tour the world in 3D Innovative Design teacher Jennifer Woytkiw and student Nathan Honorato speak about virtual field trips that offer students new learning opportunities and experiences.

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STORY AND PHOTO

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n any given day, students engage in virtual field trips, visiting places in the world they would not normally be able to experience.

Or they “tour” places of history to learn, for example, about World War I's trench warfare from eye level at the bottom of one of the trenches.

In teacher Jennifer Woytkiw's work with young students throughout the BOCES program and with teenagers in Innovative Design class, virtual reality is a new tool that exposes kids to the wider world, robust learning experiences and creative career opportunities.

“We are giving them an immersion experience,” said Woytkiw.

By means of goggles fitted with computer technology, virtual reality offers students the sense of being inside and part of a different world.

It's a step beyond losing one's self in a book or a great piece of music, it's a new world to explore that makes one feel present both mentally and physically.

For example, BOCES' third grade students work on age-appropriate engineering lessons by “traveling and exploring” the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as they watch rockets being built via virtual reality.

“Kids today are used to being on smartphones and devices,” said Woytkiw. “They can tour the world with the right software. It's a tool that kids can also use outside the classroom setting.”

Last month, Woytkiw and BOCES Innovative Design student Nathan Honorato took the virtual reality show on the road. They drove to the state capitol in Albany to participate in a BOCES Awareness Day with 36 other BOCES, each selecting one of its programs to highlight for law-

makers.

Honorato, a senior from the Monticello Central School District, walked legislators and others through virtual experiences that included an up-close look at the seven wonders of the modern world. The Taj Mahal in India, the Roman Coliseum and Peru's Machu Picchu were just a few of the threedimensional trips taken by the fascinated onlookers.

Honorato was able to explain how as one moves around, the virtual reality world moves with you, allowing you to feel transported to the moon or down to the bottom of the sea.

“We were the big hit of the whole event,” said Woytkiw. “People kept coming back to try it again. Most of them were in complete awe.”

Innovative Design at Sullivan BOCES attracts students looking to enter the digital manufacturing and gaming industries to become architects, designers, builders, gamers, landscapers, makers and engineers.

Students interested in the program typically have a high school average of 80 or above in math and/or science.

“In Innovative Design, we have the latest use in digital technology and software,” explained Honorato.

Students who successfully complete the course can gain college credit with SUNY Sullivan in Loch Sheldrake.

Specifically with regard to virtual reality as a learning tool, “It's fascinating and very helpful when I need to have a visual representation,” Honorato said. “At first, it blew my mind.”

Terrific, said his teacher: “When you have a positive response to new content, you retain that content,” said Woytkiw. “And virtual reality is really fun and ageless.”

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Outdoor-bound students use latest techology for learning STORY AND PHOTO

BY KATHY DALEY

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n indoors job at a desk?

That's not the life for most of the students in Sam Rogers' Natural Resources program.

“I'm looking to go into heavy machinery,” said Sullivan West High School senior Kevin Eaton. “My grandfather had heavy equipment, and I always wanted to do that.”

When he graduates this year, Eaton plans to go on to either Alfred State or SUNY Cobleskill, both of which have articulation agreements with BOCES' Natural Resources course – the program that gives Eaton and 31 other students a leg up on their futures.

“Students are trained on the systems of heavy equipment,” said Rogers. “We operate the excavator, 'dozer, mason dump truck, articulated front-end loader, skid steer, utility tractor and backhoe.”

Then there's the operation of

drones, a relatively new field that is burgeoning in businesses from real estate to construction to agriculture.

Drone operators can earn salaries of $100,000 and more, said Rogers.

Unmanned aerial vehicles that can be remotely controlled, drones can also fly autonomously through the software-controlled flight plans in their systems. In Natural Resources class, each student has the use of her or his own drone as a learning tool.

“It used to be that if someone needed photos of topography, for example, they had to hire a helicopter,” the teacher explained.

Operational costs for hiring a helicopter typically includes crew, training, maintenance, spare parts and fuel.

By contrast, a drone operator can take images of topography in an afternoon. Drones are used in building inspections, construction sites, laser scanning or thermal image recording, which detects and makes images of heat radiation. Drones are

Students can experiment and study topography of the land in the three-dimenional virtual sand-box. Above, Sullivan West student Kevin Eaton explains how a projector infuses ordinary sand with the contours of mountains, valleys and rivers.

also used to spray agricultural crops with nutrients or pesticides.

“By piloting drones, loggers can view drainage,” added Rogers, referring locally to the ongoing drainage problems in frequently watersoaked Livingston Manor.

Manor's drainage issues brings up another new “tool” in Rogers' class: an interactive topographical map that uses sand in a sand-box and a computer-controlled projector.

Topographical maps typically show contour lines that indicate mountains, plains, ridges and valleys. By contrast, the virtual sandbox in Rogers' room portrays a

three-dimensional version of all that, including waterways such as those that tend to flood Livingston Manor.

The topographical map lays atop the sand, projected from above by the projector.

“It's a great visual aid for students – It shows three dimensions without having to actually go there,” said Rogers.

From the Sullivan County Soil & Water Conservation District and the Rondout Neversink Stream Program, BOCES received a grant to create the sand-box and to set up the same project in each school district in the

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Natural Resources students, juniors and seniors both, work outdoors throughout the school year. At BOCES' Rubin Pollack Education Center on Ferndale Road, they evaluate damage to roads and infrastructure in springtime and then repair. In warm weather, they landscape, prune, mulch and plant.

Winter has them plowing snow and making harsh-weather repairs to the driveway.

For students like Kevin Eaton, the outdoor work and the indoor learning are leading to a fulfilling future.

“Technology like the virtual sandbox can be used to help the environment in many way,” he said, “by directing flooding, leveling stuff out to build cities and (thereby) affecting the population and the economy.”

Eaton's teacher agrees. “I want to expose my students to as much technology as possible in the industry,” said Rogers. “I hope that at some point, each student will said, “Oh! that's what I want to do.”

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Monticello school district students Ivan Rodriguez, left, and Vincent Wright prepare to start work on salad making in their twoyear Culinary Arts class at BOCES. Seniors wear black aprons and chef hats, juniors wear white.

Loving what’s coming from the kitchen on Ferndale Road STORY AND PHOTOS

BY KATHY DALEY

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t the Career & Tech Center on Ferndale Road, Anthony Carrion of the Liberty school district learns how to create food dishes he's never tried before, like corned beef and cabbage or a salad dressing fashioned with freshly-made red wine vinegar.

“I'm learning how to cook for a lot of people,” added Carrion, who's garbed in a white jacket and chef's hat.

A junior at Liberty High, Carrion studies Culinary Arts, and he fully expects to further his culinary education in college.

On the other hand Mya Reynolds, also a Liberty High School student, has learned what she doesn't feel drawn to. She signed up for the BOCES culinary class because she wanted to bake.

But the program has been helpful, instead, in revealing to her that the

food field is not her passion.

“I'm thinking of criminal justice now,” said Reynolds.

Career & Tech for Sullivan County's high school juniors and seniors allows students to experience particular professions before making important decisions about work or college.

It's all good, say Culinary Arts teachers Chris Jurgens and Kathy Poppo.

“Even if you don't go on (into the culinary field), you learn how to cook for your family,” said Poppo.

This year, 44 students are enrolled in the program. On any given day, delicious smells waft about the Career & Tech Center, and everybody knows it comes from student cooking.

To immerse students in many opportunities for “cooking big,” the program treats lucky BOCES employees to twice-a-week lunches par excellence.

The menu might include sour dough bread topped with grilled smoked gouda and turkey with bacon, or

Liberty school district student Anthony Carrion makes individual pizza crusts for lunch to be served up by students to BOCES staff.

chicken salad with toasted walnuts and Craisins over mixed greens.

There's usually some delicious cheese biscuit or herb and cheese roll

involved, and a tempting dessert like banana marshmallow cupcake.

Culinary students also get great experience catering all over Sullivan County. They've cooked for government officials, Chamber of Commerce members and special events at school districts, such as a recent Tri-Valley Central School District conference day for teachers.

In the U.S., the food industry is the second fastest growing field in need of workers; the first is health care. Two Career & Tech graduates now attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y. The food service manager at Livingston Manor Central School is a BOCES Culinary Arts alumnus, and another alumnus works as a baker for Shop Rite.

Graduates of the BOCES culinary program often come back to visit with teachers, interact with students and pitch in for large special events, said the teachers, who have extensive resumes themselves. Jurgens was executive chef and manager of the Beaverkill Inn. She also taught at SUNY Sullivan. Poppo graduated from the BOCES culinary program and went on to the CIA. She has managed numerous restaurants, including the Dead End Cafe in Parksville.

Teacher assistants Joanne Evans and Karen Zadubara round out the staff as the program makes its way through the state-approved, 52-chapter book “The Culinary Professional.”

Field trips to the CIA and on a sevenrestaurant tasting tour in Manhattan expose students to the life of the realworld professional. They've also visited local Wild Roots Farm in Livingston Manor, where the Gillingham family's vegetable and herb gardens, berries and orchard are on display. Edible gardens at New Hope and SUNY Sullivan are often part of the tour.

“It's extremely comprehensive here,” said Jurgens. “We try to expose them to everything.”

Students value the hands-on learning as well as the family environment created by the teaching staff as they work side by side with students.

“All this is new to me,” Carrion said.

“This program is teaching me a lot.”

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Yes, Sir! law enforcement, military, firefighting rocks ublic Safety Services is one of BOCES longest-running and popular courses for juniors and seniors from Sullivan County public schools. And the program that prepares kids for jobs as police officers, firefighters, security personnel and corrections officers keeps on getting better.

This year, the Public Safety program moved from its BOCES setting to two classrooms on the campus of SUNY Sullivan in Loch Sheldrake.

“Students get the chance to work with the college's criminal justice program and are also exposed to college life,” said Scott Palermo, principal at BOCES Career & Technical Education Center.

The high school students earn college credits as they study in the BOCES program, and afterwards are accepted into the college's Criminal Justice Program located right next door to their own classrooms.

“The Criminal Justice people come in and speak to us and we benefit from

that,” said BOCES stuTown of Montgomery dent Destiny Nash.

Police Department, “I always wanted to be spending many years on an FBI agent,” said its SWAT team, which Nash, who is a senior at specializes in high-risk Monticello high school operations such as and is now considering hostage rescue. He a career as a police offiserved on the equivalent cer. team for Orange County In the BOCES course, Police Department and she's learning about the taught at the Police various roles of the cop: Academy. investigating car crash“The law enforcees, serving on patrol, ment/public safety field dispatching, gathering is in desperate need of forensic evidence at a people,” said Barnett.

A new sign appeared on the cor- “There are very few crime scene.

Nash wears navy blue ridor wall at SUNY Sullivan this qualified applicants pants and a blue shirt year, welcoming local high these days, very few with an emblem that school students to their new qualified kids that want identifies her as Lt. Des- setting for BOCES' Public Safety to do it the right way.” tiny Nash. Her teacher, program.

Barnett brings in former police sergeant speakers on police Dennis Barnett, requires uniforms for work, firefighting and corrections, and all his students. He also promotes organizes field trips for the students. those who show leadership potential to The teacher noted that, due to the the rank of commissioned officers. experience gained by BOCES students, Barnett has a wide background in law each secured paying jobs in the securienforcement. For more than 20 years, ty field last summer, and 18 students he served as senior sergeant for the have been hired for the upcoming sea-

son at Bethel Woods Center for the Performing Arts, in security and parking.

For student Michael Buscemi, this summer will represent a different kind of milestone in his life.

“My ship date for the U.S. Navy is July 31,” said Buscemi, a senior at Monticello High.

Buscemi says he's know since he was eight years old that he wanted a job in law enforcement. Then he began thinking of joining the military.

“I took the test to get into the armed forces,” said Buscemi, who serves as a lieutenant in teacher Barnett's class. “I aced it and got a job with flying colors.”

He will serve as military police officer, known in the Navy as master-atarms.

“The Public Safety program has been an absolutely great experience,” Buscemi said. “Because of it, I'm finally going into something that is really important.”

There's a fairly significant honorarium attached to his first few months in the Navy.

“As soon as I finish boot camp,” said Buscemi, “I get a $2,000 bonus -because of my BOCES experience.”

Proudly recognizing the good work of

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in shaping young minds!

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STORY AND PHOTOS

BY KATHY DALEY

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