ELL Health Path Medical Assistant Course

Capitalizing on momentum gained from accessing California's ELL Health Path funding, HBAS - Huntington Beach Adult School has partnered with Memorial Care to offer a Medical Assistant Program with specific support for English Language Learners. MemorialCare has recruited 15 of its own incumbent workers, picked from front desk positions at the many (70+) urgent care facilities throughout the Orange County area, and HBAS has recruited 10 more students (7 from its own intermediate to advanced levels of ESL and 3 English Learners new to Huntington Beach Adult School).

The class will be co-taught by a CTE instructor with a degree in Medicine from UAG and a Masters in Biology from UCI and an ESL support instructor. Preparation for this course included more than two months adapting the current Medical Assistant curriculum offered by HBAS to specifically plan for support for English Learners.

The course will utilize the McGraw Hill curriculum already utilized by HBAS but the outline for the class has received input from a Clinical Education Manager with MemorialCare, who met with the HBAS CTE instructor to make sure that it had the components MemorialCare desired. The course will also utilize the EnGen platform, a language upscaling program which HBAS anticipates will be integral to program success. Both instructors have been onboarded into the program and have planned for utilizing this curriculum to complement the existing curriculum and allow more opportunities for practicing English in context.

Students will attend a Welcome/Onboarding session at MemorialCare headquarters in Fountain Valley on Thursday, February 22nd. This meeting, besides being an opportunity to kick things off and have program participants meet each other and get a glimpse of what is to come, will include an onboarding of the students into the EnGen program. Students will leave this meeting knowing they need to start their first EnGen course, an introduction to EnGen, before beginning their first class on March 5th. Students in this program will meet two evenings a week from 5-9pm, and on Saturdays, 8am - 4:30pm. The weekday classes will occur at MemorialCare Headquarters and Saturdays will be at the HBAS main campus for CTE classes.

This article will receive follow-up / updates as milestones are achieved, including the Welcome/Onboarding session this coming Thursday. Picks of students, instructors, etc. (with permission) and further program updates to follow as we move along...