Spring break boot camp prepares Roxbury high schoolers for nursing certification

For juniors at the Edward M. Kennedy Academy of Health Careers, spring break offered more than just a chance to relax from their academics.

The 11th graders at the school spent some of their break at a boot camp to prepare them for the certified nursing assistant certification exam they’re scheduled to take in May.

During the boot camp, which ran April 22 through 25, students did practice tests and tried hands-on skills like cleaning dentures, catheter care and, repositioning patients who couldn’t move themselves, all the sorts of tasks that would be included in the test.

Students at the boot camp said they were excited to get more experience with the hands-on skills they’ll need to demonstrate when they test for the certification.

“It makes me excited because it makes me feel more comfortable practicing the skills so that the day of the exam, I don’t feel pressure or feel this kind of anxiety because I don’t know the skills,” said Sarah Hernandez, a junior at the Edward M. Kennedy Academy of Health Careers.

The program will help students like Hernandez and her classmate Adassah Daphnis, who are looking forward to careers in nursing, take steps toward those goals.

“It’s really just about knowing what to do and being able to help people properly,” said Daphnis, who said she’s drawn to health care because she wants to help people and positively impact them.

For Yasmin Vazquez, one of the juniors in the program, the boot camp and the certification it’ll help her earn was an exciting way to jumpstart her goal of becoming a nurse practitioner.

“I feel like me being so young helps me get a quick start,” she said. “… I’m 17, and now I’ve seen a lot of the medical field, and I know a lot of it. I feel like it gives me a jump start into helping others.”

The students who earn their CNA following the boot camp will bring significantly younger faces to the field. The average age of a nursing assistant in the United States, according to Data USA is about 39 years old.

Hernandez said that she’s grateful for the opportunity to pursue the certification now so she can pursue other opportunities and passions later.

“I just feel like having the opportunity to do it at a young age is just having more time to do other stuff you want to do,” she said.

This program to support Boston’s young people means making more opportunities to live and work in the city they grew up in, said Jennifer Smith, executive director of career and technical education at the Edward M. Kennedy Academy of Health Careers.

Juniors at Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers practice catheter care during a bootcamp to prepare for the certified nursing exam that they’re scheduled to take in May. Students described the program as a way to help them jumpstart careers in nursing and healthcare. PHOTO: AVERY BLEICHFELD/BAY STATE BANNER

“We are really trying to build something organically from the neighborhoods of Boston, making sure that young people have the opportunities to stay here and have a great career and opportunities in health care,” she said.

Smith, who previously worked in the district’s central office with career and technical education, coordinating with schools that had or were working to start CTE pathways, said she’s seen lots of interest from Boston students in this kind of programming.

“Across the board, there’s a lot of interest from students in BPS in STEM and science and health careers,” she said. “There’s just so many students interested in it, and we really need to zone in on that.”

That interest is something that Vazquez said she’s seen as well.

“Each time I talk about it to my other friends that don’t go to this school that also want to do the same career as me, they’re always like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool. It’s so amazing that you’re doing that,’ and they wish that they had the same opportunity as I,” she said.

The boot camp marked the first time that the program was offered to juniors from the school.  In the past, it’s been aimed at students in their last semester of high school.

Smith said the change is designed to open opportunities for students to start working as a certified nursing assistant during the summer or during their senior year and to pursue other options during their last year of high school, like dual enrollment classes.

“That’s the goal, to give them these opportunities before they leave high school,” she said.

And it’s part of a broader shift for the school, following a $37.8 million grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2024 to foster more access to health care careers for students.

“The first component of it is, how do we do more to expose students to careers in health?” said Kristin Driscoll, director of the Bloomberg Health Care Initiative at Mass General Brigham.

With support from that grant, the school will expand its class size and move to a new campus that can host all of its students at once — currently, 9th and 10th graders attend classes at a building in Mission Hill while 11th and 12th graders attend classes at a building in Roxbury.

Starting in the fall, 9th, 10th and 11th grade students at the school will attend classes at the Lincoln building in the Bay Village neighborhood. That building, which is being renovated now to accommodate the students, will include new labs to support additional career technical education pathways for students.

But the move will be a temporary one. In a letter to the school community from September, Caren Walker, the head of the school, said the Lincoln building would not be the school’s permanent home. That move, she said, is anticipated for the 2026-2027 or 2027-2028 school year.

The expansion is all in service, Driscoll said, of connecting students with five so-called “specialty pathways,” careers the students can pursue that will offer them long-term possibilities. Those pathways are intended to be available to high school graduates with what she called “scaffolded career ladders.”

“Students could come in at a high school education level and then grow within the organization or go to school — they could do a certificate, associate or bachelor’s program — and come back to Mass General Brigham and seek an opportunity,” Driscoll said.

Those pathways are nursing, emergency services, medical imaging, pathology and medical lab sciences, and perioperative services — services throughout the surgery process.

“The whole vision of this grant was to take this Health Careers Academy and really move it to the next level,” Smith said. “That is giving more access to students in BPS and also getting the word out there that we are a kind of a boutique, unique school. It’s going to be all health care.”

The expansion will also help bolster the region’s health care workforce pipeline in a way that will increase equity for the students who participate and the patients they will ultimately serve, said Dr. Elsie Taveras, chief community health and health equity officer at Mass General Brigham.

“The expansion of the Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers is a significant step in advancing efforts to increase the health care workforce pipeline and ultimately improving health outcomes across the region,” Taveras said in a statement. “This joint EMK and MGB initiative, funded through the generosity of Bloomberg Philanthropies, not only addresses a critical talent need but also opens doors to long-term financial and generational stability for individuals and families across Boston.”

Looking back at her experience in the district’s central office, and at the 100 additional freshmen joining the fall’s class following increased outreach efforts, Smith said it’s a mission that she thinks students will get behind.

“There are students interested in this,” she said. “We just need to give them the opportunity, like other regional vocational schools are doing.”