Students at Elevate Academy North get hands-on experience in CTE course

Elevate Academies is part of a network of schools with a mission for all students to take responsibility for leading their own lives. The schools do this by offering career technical education (CTE) programs in alternative settings across Idaho.

The Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health provided a grant to Elevate Academy North in Post Falls to help the school to expand its Medical Assisting Program that affords students the option to earn a CCMA (Certified Clinical Medical Assistant) credential.

Kelly Olson teaches the medical coursework at the school and understands how fortunate the students are to have this opportunity.

Students, including Kyla Wattenhofer and Tyson Vandever, practice performing TB tests using hot dogs during their class at Elevate Academy North.

“I think this is an amazing program to be set in a high school setting,” Olson said. “When my kids do graduate and take the CCMA exam, they will have the same degree that I have on their way out of high school with no college debt. I think that’s absolutely amazing.”

Olson operated a daycare for nine years before attending college to earn her CCMA credential. She worked in a dermatology and micrographic surgery clinic and loved the job, but she learned about the teaching position and couldn’t refuse.

“Somehow, I always find my way back to children,” she said.

Her students are happy she made that choice. They appreciate being taught by someone with real-world experience.

“Having a teacher that’s been in the field allows her to share the experience and go in deeper with how it was working with patients and understanding how you’re supposed to talk to them and everything like that, which I find really fascinating and cool,” said Tyson Vandever, a senior, who is also working on his phlebotomy certification.

The accredited medical assisting pathway at Elevate North provides options for students that go beyond the CCMA certification.

“Yes, I am teaching them to become CCMAs, but the ones that aren’t interested in becoming a CCMA, there’s so many different aspects of the medical field,” she said. “It does not have to be an MA, it doesn’t have to be an RN. There’s technical, there’s booking, there’s secretarial, there’s all those different aspects of medical that people don’t really think about every single time they think medical assistant. There’s so many different aspects to the medical field that they can choose from.”

Kyla Wattenhofer is a senior who plans to enroll in the North Idaho College nursing program this fall and eventually wants to work in pediatrics. She was one of the students who helped organize successful blood drives at the school.

“It was really nice to see from our side, as students, how to run events like that,” she said. “We had to market it. We had to set schedules and make sure that people were actually going to show up to do the blood drive. It was an amazing experience.”

The blood drives exceeded their goals in terms of the number of participants, but there was another important aspect to them. Elevate North is a relatively new school, having opened in the fall of 2022, and these events are a way for the school to support the community.

“The blood drives just help us go out into the community more because they are community events,” Vandever said. “We talked with our parents, grandparents, guardians, everybody like that. They can sign up for it and come into our school, see our school, and then also donate blood. It goes back to the community, which is very important to us.”