Butte-Glenn’s adult education program helped jump-start one woman’s career into nursing
It opened my eyes and made me happy, because I didn’t know at first what I wanted to do,” Raven Ortega, 23, says about the Butte-Glenn Adult Education Consortium. “And now I’ve realized I want to be a nurse and I want to work at the hospital with the babies.”
Ortega, a single mother who previously worked at McDonald’s, applied for the certified nurse assistant program because she had a scholarship she had to use before it expired. She chose the CNA program at Oroville Adult Education, a member of the Butte-Glenn Adult Education Consortium, for its quick start and promise of work.
“At first I didn’t know what CNAs even did,” Ortega says. “I always wanted to help people, but I didn’t know (in what way).”
“And what’s weird is I hated school, but after graduating high school and going into CNA school, I was like, ‘I could do it, I can do college.’”
Raven Ortega, Certified Nurse Assistant and Oroville Adult Education graduate
Ortega finished the 11-week program and began working at the Oroville Hospital Post Acute Center for three years before deciding to attend nursing school.
She says completing the CNA program helped her open up to the idea of attending college: “And what’s weird is I hated school, but after graduating high school and going into CNA school, I was like, ‘I could do it, I can do college.’”
The CNA program was also more than just bookwork—Ortega describes how daily clinical classes trained her and other students right on-site.
“We got to do hands-on…like, go in in the morning and we’d do everything that the CNAs did: showers, the bathing, the training, all that,” Ortega says.
There were some challenges. Dealing with medical information and patient confidentiality were major concerns at first, but Ortega says learning how to help people was worth it. Adult education didn’t just give her a job; it gave her a purpose.
“It changed me as a person,” she says, “because I went from not knowing how to deal with people and not understanding it to where now I know about medical history and I know how to take care of people and help them.”
For more information, visit butteglennadulted.org.
Written by Krysta Scripter
| Regions | Classes |
|---|---|
| Northern California | Careers in Health Care |
