FRACKVILLE, Pa. — For the first time, Krystie Ward from Pottsville is seeing where she's going to spend the next year.
The emerging health classroom at Schuylkill Technology Center's north campus.
Although it's been years since Ward has been a student in a classroom, she's excited to be one of the first in the vo tech school's new adult programs for medical assisting.
Something Ward never thought she would do.
“Me and my husband and my husband's family ran a couple of karate schools and I actually thought that's what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” she said.
Then she changed to a different full-time job.
“I had kids so I kinda took the back seat a little bit to help my husband and make sure the kids were okay,”
And then, Ward found her calling: Healthcare.
“Well I started right in the middle of Covid, the worst part, and I was a nursing assistant in the ICU, so I saw the worst of the worst,” she added.
After falling in love with supporting patients, doctors and nurses, she wants to do more in the medical field, without putting her family and full-time job to the side.
Students like Ward are what inspired the Schuylkill Technology Center to add the medical assisting evening program.
“There's definitely been a void in Schuylkill County for short-term career training programs and we're excited to be able to fill that. Our goal was really flexible for people who work during the day, affordable and local,” explained Shannon Brennan, Schuylkill Technology Center Director.
So students like Ward can work and raise a family. While training, Ward's dream job is working in pediatrics.
“I'm actually glad it happened this way because I don't know if I would've wanted to be a nurse right out of high school or even in health care like I didn't think about health care at that time,” she mentioned.
There are still spots open for adult students who want to get involved with the Schuylkill Technology Center's new medical assisting program that will kick off in mid-July. To find out ways to get enrolled, you can find more here.