Graduation Day !

Helping Students Succeed

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 16:13:36 GMT

Fieldstone teacher loves helping students succeed

There’s a map at the back of the room where Maureen Fisher teaches. It’s filled with pins indicating where in the world her students are from. Students enroll in The Fieldstone School to begin a career in healthcare, learning skills which often take them in a new direction.

That’s one of the best things about teaching healthcare at The Fieldstone School, says longtime teacher and licensed nurse Maureen Fisher, LPN. She loves to help students change their lives and find success.

Some of The Fieldstone School students are at a stage in their lives in which they are unhappy with what they are doing and are looking for a different path. Providing encouragement, motivation and positivity are key to helping them succeed, Fisher said.

“This is their steppingstone, right here. They need a good, strong foundation in healthcare,” Fisher said of the programs at The Fieldstone School.

Fisher teaches Certified Nurse Aide and Home Health Aide classes. Students taking these courses can go on to work as a home health aide or in a nursing home and gain good experience.

She has taught at The Fieldstone School for six years across two different time periods. After Fisher left the school for semi-retirement, she became bored. So, in September 2024, her passion for nursing and educating others drew her back to Fieldstone.

In her classes, she emphasizes the importance of respect and dignity in healthcare and teaches students to take care of patients “the right way.” Treat patients “the way that you would want to be treated,” she advises her students, “the way that you would want your mother to be treated, or your father, or your family to be treated.”

When students graduate and work in clinical settings, she said, it’s the real world. People need them and are depending on them to be there and take care of them.

Fisher encourages her students to pursue careers in healthcare because the field offers job security and opportunities for advancement. She finds herself acting as a career counselor, helping students decide on their future direction and supporting them during their clinical experiences.

Students at The Fieldstone School come from diverse backgrounds. They range in age from their 20s to older students who are changing careers. Some are just entering the healthcare workforce while others may already be international physicians. A few students had been engineers in Kenya who were transitioning to the healthcare field for job security, she recalled. Others were doctors from India who needed different certifications and the one-on-one experience of clinical work in an American setting.

Many of Fisher’s students are planning to go into nursing or even become physician assistants. They all need patient-focused experience, a requirement for college. And they are all drawn to a career in which they can advance.

“And then I have my wonderful students that want to go into the field simply to help people,” Fisher continued. “They are very excited. They want to learn.”

She tries to make learning interesting and fun, even injecting some humor into her lessons. For example, while teaching a class on death and dying, she dispels myths about death – acting out fears that bodies in rigor mortis may move unexpectedly, raising her arms in a spooky way to help the students fight their fears.

It’s all part of emphasizing that her students will have other people’s lives in their hands. All humor aside, they need to take their job seriously and know how to respond if something happens.

Fisher’s interest in nursing began when she was about 8 years old. When her mother was sick, she would make meals for her and ensure she was drinking enough fluids to stay hydrated. She also took care of her sister and brother when school-age illnesses took their toll.

Plus, both her grandmother, mother and aunt were nurses. She had plenty of real-life advice from them.

Fisher grew up in Worcester and on the South Shore and then studied nursing at the former New Hampshire Technical College. She has spent her 35-year career in geriatrics, working with older people in nursing homes. She also has taught nursing classes at the American Red Cross.

“There’s something about working with the elderly,” she mused. “Respecting them, and wanting to take care of them the right way,” she said. “It’s just the way I would want to be treated, with respect and dignity.”

To highlight the impact of her teaching, Fisher shared a story about a former student who became a nurse practitioner. Fisher had gone to her doctor’s office for a physical examination and was asked if she minded seeing the nurse practitioner. It was during COVID-19 and she was wearing a mask. She didn’t recognize the nurse practitioner (also masked) but the nurse practitioner recognized Fisher! She realized it was one of her former students.

The teacher was ecstatic about her student’s success. She had not been aware the student was going to become a nurse practitioner.

“She’s smart as a whip,” Fisher said of her former student. “So proud of her!”

With teachers like Fisher, The Fieldstone School provides its students with the knowledge and experience they need to succeed in the healthcare field -- and its teachers with the inspiration and joy of helping their students change their lives.

CNA Graduation

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 15:34:17 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

Fieldstone School Changes Entire Family's Life

inosike@thefieldstoneschool.com (Isidore Nosike) — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 17:39:58 GMT

The Fieldstone School is a family affair

You could say the Fieldstone School is a family affair for the Kimanis, all four of whom obtained their dual Nurse Aide/Home Health Aide certification after graduating from the program during 2022.

“I feel it was an opportunity to learn something new every day, instead of staying home,” said Eden, who is in a gap year between high school and college.

It was Eden’s mother who first learned about the healthcare programs at Fieldstone, enrolled and graduated.

Everyone in the family is now employed in the healthcare field or will be soon. Eden’s older brother and sister both work for an organization that provides clinical, educational and community-based supports to people with disabilities.

For Eden, the course at Fieldstone was “pretty easy. I’m a fast learner. It was not so hard,” she said.

She had experience working as a support advocate at Seven Hills, so she knew what to expect, explaining that a support advocate helps with daily tasks in a residential group setting, helping residents dress, assisting with their toileting, preparing them for appointments and sometimes preparing meals.

The teachers at Fieldstone covered the material “pretty fast,” she said. “They show you once, give you one try and you have to learn by yourself – practice, practice.”

That meant role-playing in class.

“We had to get comfortable with each other in class as we practiced on each other,” Eden explained. “One would be the CNA, one would be the patient.” That could get awkward sometimes, she noted, such as when using bed pans.

During class demonstrations, the teacher often asked Eden to play the part of the patient.

“I was the smallest,” said Eden, who is 5 feet 2 inches tall. Because she could see what everyone was doing, she believes she had a better learning experience from taking on that patient role.

After finishing her classroom studies at Fieldstone, Eden completed her clinical work at Christopher House in Worcester. She recently moved outside the area and is considering employment options.

All four family members were motivated and eager to work in the healthcare industry. The Fieldstone School’s top-notch courses and instructors made their new careers possible.

Visit the website at www.thefieldstoneschool.net to learn more about how the Fieldstone School can help you achieve your healthcare ambition.

Vaccines Protect Patients

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 14:30:00 GMT

Your patients need to be protected

Some students don’t understand why I insist they be vaccinated for COVID-19. They need to do this both to participate in our healthcare training programs and to comply with the state mandate for home care workers and health facilities staff. It’s simple: vaccines don’t just protect you, they protect the people around you.

Most importantly, I believe it is the ethical responsibility of healthcare workers to be vaccinated for the virus to protect patients. Some healthcare workers say it is their right to choose not to be vaccinated. They do have that right, but they should consider going into another field if they don’t want to take the responsibility of protecting the patients they work with. Do no harm is the mantra in the healthcare industry.

COVID-19 has killed more than 850,000 people in the U.S. and 5 million worldwide. Unvaccinated people are more likely to contract COVID, have more severe symptoms that require hospitalization and die from the virus. Precautions need to be taken to ensure patients in hospitals and other healthcare facilities are not exposed to the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says getting vaccinated also will reduce your chances of contracting COVID-19 from working with infected patients or handling materials that may contain the virus. You will not only protect yourself, you will also protect your patients and members of your family.

The Delta variant has caused more infections and is much more contagious than the original form of the virus, making vaccinations even more essential. Another variant – Omicron – emerged in November in southern Africa and spread quickly across the United States. Early studies show it is more transmissible and may have milder effects, but scientists need more data to gauge how well existing vaccines work against it.

Healthcare workers are required to be vaccinated for rubella, hepatitis B and influenza in many hospitals. The COVID-19 vaccines became divisive, in part, because the virus and restrictions to minimize its spread during the pandemic were considered political. Some people have medical or religious reasons for not being vaccinated.

Children and adults have been receiving vaccines for decades. Vaccines have saved lives and reduced the prevalence of some diseases in the U.S. According to the CDC, those diseases include polio, tetanus, influenza, hepatitis B, hepatitis A, rubella, Hib meningitis, measles, whooping cough (pertussis), pneumococcal disease, rotovirus, mumps, chickenpox and diptheria.

I’m grateful for all the potential students who are interested in participating in our highly regarded healthcare programs. I hope you will understand why vaccination for the coronavirus is so important, particularly in this field, and will be vaccinated so you can participate.