Jobs for Maine Grads teacher Chyanna Millett-Cordwell talks with student Autumn Thompson about her senior capstone project at Telstar. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen

BETHEL — For her Jobs for Maine Grads, or JMG class, Telstar junior Makenzie Eliot compiled a 20-page Powerpoint of her experience. Before she begins she offers a warning that some of the photos are graphic.

JMG and Telstar student Makenzie Eliot pulls porcupine quills out of a sedated dog during her job share at Mid Maine Animal Emergency Clinic. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen

Each slide is marked with case numbers.  Case #1, A Dog Fight: punctures and bruising, shave and clean, x-ray, stitches. On another slide Eliot notes that several “blocked” cats had arrived at the clinic and had catheters inserted to flush their bladders. “I actually got to push [on their bladders],” she said smiling. She assisted in other surgeries, too. A dog was hit by a car and had fluid drained. Case #4 was a quill attack. “This one was probably my favorite because I got to take out the quills myself,” said Eliot who took a few quills home.

She is working at Animal Emergency Clinic of Mid-Maine as part of her JMG class. Her aunt is a vet tech and manages the Lewiston hospital. From her very positive experience, Eliot said, she’d like to pursue a career in the medical field. However, she says, she is still unsure if she would like to treat animals or people. (Next year she hopes to work with human patients at Stephens Memorial).

JMG was established by the Maine State Legislature in 1993 and is the largest statewide education non-profit in Maine. The program’s target was to have 4,000 11th and 12th graders sign on, said Chyanna Millett-Cordwell who has run the JMG class at Telstar since the fall of 2019.

She describes JMG as “not the typical classroom.”

In Eliot’s atypical classroom, the animal hospital, she worked some shifts that ended at 2 a.m.  “There were quite a few times where we had parents freaking out,” she recalled. Once a woman walked into the clinic in a full onesie animal print, pajama suit carrying her cleft-footed cat and “balling her eyes out.” The cat’s intestines were blocked The staff was able to successfully treat the cat. From this experience and others, she learned not only how to handle animals, but also how to handle “animal parents.”

When a dog came in seizing, everyone in the clinic stopped what they were doing to help. She learned how triage works (prioritizing patients by severity).

In Eliot’s presentation, she showed ultrasounds of two pregnant dogs, one carrying seven puppies, another carrying four. Both had to be c-sectioned. It is not unlike a human c-section, she noted.

She observed a cat tail amputation. “[The cat] got its tail caught in a door. The entire muscle and hair came right off. I got to keep that part of the tail… but I actually have something weirder that I kept.

“It was [from] a dog attack and they had to remove the eye. I kept the eye in a jar and I still have it,” said Eliot.

JMG at Telstar

In Millett-Cordwell’s second floor classroom at Telstar, two students have their desks pushed together and are working intently on their college essays. Millet-Cordwell occasionally pops her head between them to help edit. Another student is doing college orientation online. Autumn Thompson, of Albany Township,  is working on her senior capstone project.

Millett-Cordwell works with sophomores, juniors and seniors and at the end of everyday eighth graders come to her class, too. She said 7Peaks (6th-12th grade SAD-44 curriculum) made it easier to implement her curriculum because students are thinking about careers before they take JMG.

Fifteen students’ names are on a large board, they have all completed the JMG badge and taken home a check for $500. About 30 more undergraduates are working toward their badges. Part of the requirement is forty hours of work experience. For Eliot, her job shadow hit the target, for others a different track works better.

“We can form our curriculum with whatever best meets our students’ needs.”

Senior year, said Millett-Cordwell, is about how to be an adult. They work on career searches, college applications, financial literacy including how to fill out a W-2, civic awareness, buying a house, college loans and more. “I wish all the high schools in Maine did it (JMG). Who doesn’t need this information?”

Her undergraduates do a unit called, “how much does a baby cost?”  Each student gets an egg that they have to keep “alive” for five days. They have a “car seat”, and a “crib” and the egg gets a name and birth certificate. They are required to take their “baby” to each class. “In my class they are learning about the expenses of having children. While in another class they have to make sure no one is accidentally hitting their egg off their desk. They can’t lose their egg. They can’t put their egg in their locker,” said Millett-Cordwell.

She said, “I am one of my own students. I didn’t like school.” But she was a good student so went to CMCC, and later got her bachelor’s degree at University of Southern Maine. Her master’s degree is from Southern New Hampshire University. Both post graduate degrees were paid for by CMCC where she was working. As, part of the “cost of college” lesson, she tells her students she likely wouldn’t have gotten post degrees, if her employer hadn’t paid.

“Students see value in what I teach,” said Millet Cordwell, who describes herself as a life mentor to her students and believes that she connects with them partly because of her age, (28) but also because she treats them like people. “You have to know each one of them individually, if you don’t then that’s too bad. They are all pretty interesting.”

Millet-Cordwell stays in touch with her students after they graduate until the August following graduation (16 months in all). She recently  connected Ava Hopps, ’22, to Crossway Dental, to job shadow and test the waters before matriculating in a dental assistant program at Region 9. “She did her 40 hours [at Crossway Dental], and she fell in love with it. It was definitely beneficial for her to figure out what was going to be best for her,” said Millett-Cordwell.

Violet Howe

It  is 8:30am on a Monday morning and Telstar senior, Violet Howe, is inventorying the interior of an ambulance at Bethel Rescue. She opens a pack , “this is a drill, way, way, way out of my scope of practice,”  she says as she hits a button and it begins to whir, “It’s to drill into someone’s bone to get them fluids faster. Say you have a patient that has been in a car accident and you can’t get IV access and they are losing fluid and they need medication quick into their system. They drill into their bone marrow.”

As part of Jobs for Maine Grads, Telstar senior Violet Howe, works at Bethel Ambulance. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen

Howe works at Bethel Rescue every other day of the week. She also picks up weekend and night shifts and if she’s driving through town and her pager goes off, she responds. She has passed the EMT class and will take the certification test.

As part of  JMG she needed 40 hours of work to attain a badge and receive $500. However, she went much further and, last year alone, worked 300 hours. Said Howe, “I love being on the ambulance with my co-workers.” Having worked alongside paramedics, EMT’s and drivers, she said, “I’ve learned from every single one of them.”

Howe, of West Paris, said she was not always comfortable in the back of the ambulance, having traveled to the hospital as a patient a few times.  It is hard to believe, as she confidently inventories the equipment and describes some of the protocols that are required. As to why someone would need to be drilled with the IO (intra oscular), she says, “If they are dehydrated, in pain, or cold that is the worst combination. [But] if they are competent or oriented properly we’ll just warm them up with heat pads, extra blankets even turn the heat up.”

Besides all of the hands-on knowledge she has gained, Howe also has learned that EMT pay is low, and no health care, dental or retirement benefits are offered. Also, the hours are crazy.

For all those reasons, she has decided to go to school for sonography to become an ultra-sound technician, applying to Maine College of Health Professions in Lewiston.  She likes sonography as a career for many of the reasons she doesn’t want a full-time career as an EMT. Sonographers generally work 9-5 and have benefits. She also appreciates that she is able to build from sonography to get a CT (computerized tomography) degree or mammogram certificate.

Even though she will go to school to be a sonographer, she said she will never leave Bethel Ambulance. “This will be my per diem, night job. I don’t plan on ever leaving here.”