At McHenry High, students earn nursing assistant certifications, white coats

Gracee Majkrzak didn’t have the full four years in McHenry Community High School District 156‘s biomedical science program that students do now.

Majkrzak, the keynote speaker for the program’s white coat ceremony, graduated from East High School – now the Freshman Campus – in 2020. She took Principles of Biomedical Science and Human Body Systems classes in high school, and with the medical residency class, got to shadow different departments at Northwestern Medicine McHenry Hospital as part of her program.

Now Majkrzak is back home, having graduated last year from nursing school at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. She is working as an overnight nurse in the cardiac telemetry floor at McHenry Northwestern Hospital.

The program at McHenry High “gave me a one-up in introductory classes” in college and among her class of 110 nursing students, Majkrzak said.

This spring, 31 McHenry High students received their white coats, signifying they’d completed all the classes the school now offers in biomedical sciences: Principles of Biomedical Science, Human Body Systems and Medical Interventions, and two capstone courses, including the certified nursing assistant program.

Of the graduates, 25 now have their CNA training – the first class of CNA students at McHenry High – and can go directly to work in the state in that role.

CNA training can cost $2,000 elsewhere, said Leah Pelletier, the biomedial science teacher. At McHenry High, it’s $250.

Four of the students are going directly into nursing school – three who are direct-admissions into nursing programs and one into physical therapy, Pelletier said.

Megan Crow is one of those direct-admissions students. “I can start clinicals a little sooner” in college because of the class experience, she said.

Crow, who plans to become a neonatal intensive care nurse, said she’s known since elementary school that she wanted to be a nurse and she watched her grandmother, a medical technician, and heard her stories.

“She inspired me,” Crow said.

Addison Rogers was one of 11 students given a stethoscope for the Scope of Excellence award for receiving straight A’s throughout the program. She’s accepted into Bradley University’s nursing program in Peoria and plans to study pediatric nursing. Her ultimate goal is to be a school nurse.

Both her parents are teachers, so school nursing “is similar, but different” from what she’s learned from them, Rogers said.