C4 Columbus Area Career Connection students have formed a petition to protest the cancellation of a class.
After learning that Dental Careers III would not be offered during this coming school year, Columbus East rising seniors and C4 dental students Wyatt Dooley and Gracie Brady shared a campaign on Change.org asking for the class to remain.
Their goal is to get 500 signatures; they had more than 300 as of Tuesday afternoon.
According to its description in C4’s course guide, Dental Careers III was meant to provide a chance for students to earn a provisional radiology permit and enhance their skills "through a community placement and specialized skill training."
"This is a wonderful opportunity for students to gain in-depth exposure to the dental field and solidify a strong foundation for transitioning into post-secondary programs or career placement," the guide states.
The petition to keep the class was created by Dooley with support from Brady. Both students have shared the link directly with individuals and on various social media platforms. They plan to take the petition to Hack once they have 500 or more signatures, Brady said.
Dooley hopes to reach a compromise that would allow the class to continue. His petition suggests one possible scenario wherein the class would remain, with some of its students interning and the others helping the new dental teacher with Dental Careers I and II classes.
Brady said that they would like to have the class back, or at least find out why it was removed.
Both students, who have made it through "Dental II," expressed a desire for real-world experience in the field, especially since other internship/externship opportunities have been affected by the pandemic.
"I want the future students to actually get a chance to experience what working in a dental office is like," Dooley said.
In regards to the cancellation, C4 Director Gene Hack explained that they tried to pilot the Dental Careers III class with just two or three students during this past school year. The main goal was for students to earn a useful credential that would help with their resume for future dental work, and the possibility of internships was also considered as a potential element of the class.
However, the teacher involved with the pilot resigned while the new class and curriculum were still in development. A new teacher was hired. Hack said that they "worked through it best we could" and later decided not to offer the pilot moving forward.
But due to factors such as COVID-19, scheduling and the hiring of a new teacher, school officials forgot to remove the class from C4’s course guide.
The students didn’t find out about its cancellation until the end of the school year. Dooley and Brady said that the announcement was made on the last day of school.
The pilot was removed for a number of reasons, Hack said.
"We have a new teacher," he said. "…She is teaching full-time within the dental program, and so her schedule’s full. And then we don’t have the curriculum in place that we wanted to try to do. We were trying to get the students an opportunity to do some stuff extra, and we just weren’t able to do it. The pilot didn’t go as we wanted it.”
He also stated that even if the original teacher had stayed, C4 would still have had to review the pilot and make a decision about whether or not to continue it.
Nevertheless, he apologized for the course guide error, acknowledged that there was "bad timing," and said he hated how things turned out.
However, Hack added that the C4 program still provides good classes for students interested in dental work.
“The students are meeting the criteria we were able to do with Dental I and Dental II," he said. "Students are able to meet the program needs, as well as the state requirements, and within our community as well. Like I said, we were trying to do something above and beyond, and we just weren’t able to do it with several different factors.”
Hack said that, with the exception of two parents who reached out to him, he hasn’t seen much of a reaction to the pilot being discontinued and wasn’t previously aware of the online petition to keep the class.
The C4 director is not able to predict, at this time, if the class or something similar could return in the future.
"The state’s refining curriculum at a state level, so we’ll just have to see," he said. "… And it’s not only the dental program that’s doing that. It’s happening across all the curriculum statewide with CTE programming.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Where to learn more” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
To view the petition, visit change.org and search for "The C4 Dental 3 class to stay."
To learn more about C4 Columbus Area Career Connection, visit bcscschools.org/c4.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
