What is HE3AT? HE3AT is a paid, place-based and higher education preparation program. It’s designed to provide students with increased learning opportunities to find challenges in the fields of healthcare, energy, education, environment, agriculture, and technology.
The syllabus is purposely designed to bring work and place-based experiences together with academics and project management-skills. This is to help prepare students for careers and their future interests.
Once a month, students go to their assigned place-based learning locations from one of the school’s partnered industries. Some of these sites are Maimonides, South Brooklyn Health, Federal Reserve Bank, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. There, they’re able to work with professionals of that workplace as well as teachers and students from other schools.
These professionals lead interactive learning experiences in order to call out issues with little to no solutions. Students are then tasked to find solutions on a chosen problem. “At the HE3AT site we explored different departments, such as, the radiology department, general surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, and we got to learn a lot with healthcare professionals.” senior Angel Zhang said, a previous HE3AT intern who was assigned to Maimonides Health.
Mr. Luppino, the teacher in charge of the program at JDHS, says a positive outcome of this program is that he’s able to see “students flourish academically and professionally.”
At Maimonides Health, I’ve seen students taking tours of different fields of the hospital. Each tour was given by a doctor that specializes in that field. After the tour, interns came together in the conference room and began their problem searching process. While working together they filled out numerous documents for a better understanding of the issue.
A problem one of the groups identified is that there was a shortage of cardiothoracic surgeons. Their solution to this was to increase programs and internships that offer insight on what these surgeons do. This cardiothoracic surgery group then went on to share their presentation in Microsoft along with the other groups.
Their solution of increasing internships based on cardiothoracic surgery only, won both the viewers choice award and best solution.
In addition to students traveling to their assigned location, they have a HE3AT class to look forward to. When students are not in their place-based sites, they are present in Mr. Luppino’s HE3AT class. In this class interns learn about the environment, health, financial literacy, college, and current events.
They are also challenged to find simple solutions through experimental design. Mr. Luppino aids them in their research paper and presentations too. Another previous HE3AT student, who was assigned to Federal Reserve Bank, senior Alexa De Leon Lopez said “Most of the time we would talk about health, energy, education, environment, agriculture, and technology…if not we were working on our projects.” Which she found helpful.
Not only does this program improve your communication, collaboration, and teamwork skills, it pays you. Yes, the HE3AT program is paid. You can experience having your own source of income during your junior year if you haven’t yet. In fact, if you were in the HE3AT program junior year, you have the chance to mentor the new interns during your senior year. You will continue to be paid but will have to do the documentation process all over again. This is a good opportunity for reflection and having a role as a leader.
Mr. Luppino is proud of the opportunities this program offers students. In his opinion, “this is the greatest program a student could participate in within NYC Public Schools.” However a change he would like to be made is getting more schools involved. “I can easily see this program reaching all 5 boroughs of NYC.” he said.
