Kensington Health Sciences Academy is a public school located in one of the country’s most underserved neighborhoods. The project team is developing a model for inter-professional clinical and field learning for counselors and social workers in training, nursing interns, and student teachers. It also is providing multi-disciplinary professional development and coaching to teachers, administration, and staff at the school.
The program has two primary functions. First, it works to provide a robust cross-professional training experience for Penn interns in counseling, teaching, nursing and social work that prepares them for effective practice in high-needs settings. Second, the program develops a replicable model for university-school partnership that fosters effective collaboration across the University’s internal partners as well as between the University and the school. The project, which is in its second year, has reduced KHSA’s counselor to student ratio to 75-to-1, far exceeding the American School Counselor Association’s recommendation of 250-to-1. The team hopes to replicate successes at future partner high schools.
