A glimpse toward the future: Winona middle-schoolers learn professions at Southeast

Kyle Farris, Winona Daily News
Photos by Chuck Miller
Oct. 19, 2016 

Tammi Smith was lying on a hospital bed, a large gash across her belly, a pack of giggling faces looking down at her.

Abby Steinfeldt composed herself and leaned over the patient, moving her stethoscope across the slow-beating chest. Then Abby stepped back and placed the stethoscope on her own chest. She squinted a little.

"Wait," said Abby, an eighth-grader at Winona Middle School. "Which side is the heart on?"

Abby and roughly 60 of her classmates visited Minnesota State College Southeast on Tuesday to learn about and try their hand at various professions. The visit is part of ongoing efforts among Winona's colleges and K-12 school districts to connect students to possible careers and futures they can study for while staying in the community.

The middle-schoolers Tuesday shadowed current Southeast students and their instructors, seeing firsthand how to test a urine sample, to tie an invisible hair braid, to care for a patient about to undergo a hysterectomy.

"They can do everything: check the vitals, assess whether she needs intervention," said Lisa Robertson, a nursing instructor at Southeast who oversaw the students as they experimented on Tammi Smith, a simulation manikin that can do just about everything but kick the bucket.

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