At John Marshall Enterprise High School, a group of students is surrounded by posters illustrating the human body and state-of-the-art mannequins lying on hospital beds. Their instructor, Jessica Cochran, breaks them into groups to practice anatomy skills by outlining each other on butcher paper and coloring in where they think a list of organs would go.
The high schoolers laugh as they guess what shape the stomach resembles. A bean? “That’s the kidney,” one student said. A sausage? They agree that's the one.
Cochran said she has been a nurse for a long time, but never taught in a learning environment like the one at John Marshall. In 2022, Oklahoma City Public Schools voters passed a historic, nearly $1 billion bond package. Part of it went toward funding college and career centers at six OKCPS high schools, including John Marshall.
The centers are opening this school year and will help students prepare for different career paths without leaving their campuses. One of those is healthcare.
Cochran came from Metro Technology Centers to teach nursing services in the healthcare suite at John Marshall’s college and career center. The course is also available in centers at Star Spencer, Douglass and U.S. Grant High School. It covers anatomy and physiology, medical terminology and long-term care. Students can earn a certified nursing assistant credential as early as their junior year — creating an opportunity for them to enter the workforce out of high school.
Kate Haydon-Emerson, OKCPS’ executive director of workforce development, said this partnership isn’t reinventing the wheel. Metro Tech already teaches this course to high school students, and OKCPS offers several opportunities to explore careers in healthcare. Instead, it comes in response to new graduation requirements for the class of 2030 and beyond.
In 2024, former Rep. Rhonda Baker, R-Yukon, and Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, authored House Bill 3278, which required students to complete six credits, or “pathway units,” in subjects that align with their Individual Career and Academic Plan. The tool helps students map out coursework, career goals and plans after graduation. Classes could be in core subjects or include other offerings like internships, fine arts and the Junior ROTC.
Baker, who worked as a public school teacher for about 20 years, said students were still given information on particular careers before the new requirements. But there wasn’t a “true emphasis on what is available to them.”
“That was what was so important to us when we wrote that legislation. Students have to feel the relevance of their education. We hope that they will be inspired. We hope that we will see an increase in outcomes. And we hope that the job opportunities will just be really fruitful for these students, to where they will be able to stay in Oklahoma,” said Baker, who now serves as the director of education for the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber.
OKCPS high schools are offering several pathways, including cybersecurity, film and media and advanced academics. The district surveyed the community and spoke with families and students to learn what they were interested in.
“Healthcare came to the top of the list almost on every occasion,” Haydon-Emerson said.
The nursing services course is under its healthcare pathways and will count toward three credits, Haydon-Emerson said. Those classes are starting small at 12 students per high school. They can also take foundational courses to learn more about healthcare professions.
“We want to empower our students to see what the possibilities are, and get our partners to help us tell that story because they know it better than we do a lot of times,” Haydon-Emerson said.
Because these new requirements are meant to help students explore, Haydon-Emerson said, they aren't locked in once they pick a pathway. If they decide healthcare isn’t for them, they can choose something different.
Opportunities like internships through the nursing services class will help students get hands-on experience that could better inform their decision.
“There's a glamorous side to nursing, and then there's a not-so-glamorous side. And going into long-term care, you see some of that stuff, and you have to figure out if you have patience, if you're able to follow directions,” said Michele Sanders, the dean of instruction at Metro Technology Centers.
“Students realize real fast, ‘This isn't what I thought it was, and this isn't what I want to do.’ And so they're able to pivot before they've spent a whole bunch of money on college or elsewhere.”
Metro Tech’s collaboration with OKCPS is already helping it decrease its waitlist for nursing services, a course that is full every year. It’s also reducing barriers to participation – like lack of transportation or space in a student’s course load – by bringing the class to students.
“It takes partnerships like this for us to be able to create that high-quality workforce,” Sanders said. “It takes all of us.”
The data backs up the need for programs like this. Oklahoma is projected to have a shortage of nearly 6,000 registered nurses by 2038, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. The Association of American Medical Colleges also estimates the U.S. could see an estimated shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034, with shortfalls in primary and specialty care.
“We aren't going to have enough people in these roles to take care of the aging population,” said Emily Coppock, vice president of clinical excellence at the Oklahoma Hospital Association.
Coppock first met with OKCPS as soon as she started at the association in 2024. She said her role has been to fill in industry support for these pathways and contextualize gaps through local healthcare workforce data.
The association hosted a family information event in late January about the new healthcare pathway programs launching at OKCPS. It featured representatives from several large hospital systems, including Mercy, INTEGRIS, SSM Health and OU Health.
“They're excited to see how they can help and assist and keep this going and help it to be successful,” Coppock said.
Spots were limited for OKCPS’ healthcare pathways. But Coppock said all students will have an opportunity to participate in an Explore Healthcare: Oklahoma Virtual Career Expo on Oct. 23. There, they can get a behind-the-scenes look at various roles across healthcare, including mental health, administration, ultrasound and sonography, and emergency medicine.
Coppock said she has been in these students’ shoes. She started with a degree in finance but ended up getting another degree in nursing after spending her lunchtime with her grandmother, who had congestive heart failure. She found herself wanting to research her grandmother’s condition and other aspects of healthcare more than doing her traditional job.
Now, Coppock gets to use both of her degrees. But she always thinks back to her first evening working as a certified nursing assistant. She had just helped a resident set up the DVD player that she got for Christmas. While she was getting ready for bed, the resident told Coppock she was going to have the “best day ever” tomorrow because she could watch her videos.
“I went home, and I just started crying because I was like, 'This is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to help people in this way,'” Coppock said. “And I want others to understand that it's OK if you need to start over again like I did. But I also want students to understand and have the opportunity to go and shadow any career.”
The goal of the healthcare pathways is for students to have experiences like Nara Sykes had. The recent Southeast High School graduate just turned 18, and she already has a summer job at OU Health under her belt thanks to Future Forward. It’s a new mentorship program that guides students on their resumes, interviewing and workplace expectations.
Now, Sykes is a freshman at OU, and she plans to pursue a career in healthcare.
“Programs like these can help individuals like me learn what they really want to do by giving them exposure to different career paths, and being able to ask questions, and understanding what it's actually like to be there … and what kind of impact I can have on healthcare,” Sykes said.
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