MUSKEGON, Mich. — Muskegon Area Career Tech Center partnered with the Michigan Army National Guard to provide students enrolled in various programs with mock emergency training, which helps prepare students for what may come later in life during their careers in the medical field.
“I take this very seriously going into this program and going into this field, I definitely want to get as much experience as I can,” health sciences student Ava Marshall said.
Scholars at the specialty school stepped out of their roles as students and played nurses, victims and officers during the training. The mock emergency training was led by the Michigan Army National Guard Recruiting team. Some students said the hands-on, immersive experience didn’t feel like training since the space was set up to look like a disaster. Some students described the experience as eye-opening.
“Once I get out, I also want to be doing first response and it definitely just preparing me for that and just getting in the mindset of when I leave for boot camp and when I get in the scenario and this definitely helps a lot and it gets me definitely motivated and ready to leave,” Marshall said.
Different scenarios gave students close to what would be reality, in situations such as patients having a mental health episode and knowing how to properly respond, helping to teach them to work together in a crisis situation.
“I think once the students started to actually get involved in it and started actually talking, and even our victims that were playing victim, they were yelling and playing the roles. I think that was like my best part to actually see them come alive,” National Army Guard recruiter SFV Ian DeVaney said.
Principal David Kirksey said the experience out of the classroom is invaluable to students who are given opportunities to step outside of their comfort zone while learning and growing.
“What I saw is I saw students jumping into action, they were communicating, even if they didn't know each other, they were from separate programs or separate schools, they were communicating,” Kirksey said. "They were organized chaos in a sense and they're moving students, potential victims from one room to another in the name of helping provide the services that we needed.”
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