Grade 15 - Human Services

Personal Care Services (Credit: 0.50)

This course in Personal Care Services introduces students to a variety of careers in the following areas: cosmetology (including hairstyling and haircutting, esthetics, manicuring, makeup, and teaching) and barbering (including cutting and styling of hair and facial hair and manicuring for men); massage therapy, teaching body-mind disciplines (yoga, Pilates, and the martial arts), and fitness (general exercise classes and acting as a personal trainer); and mortuary science (embalming and funeral directing). The course teaches students about what each career entails and the education and training they will need to become credentialed in various career specialties. In addition, about half of the course is devoted to teaching knowledge associated with the various professions, so that students can get a feel for what they will have to learn and whether they would like to learn it.

Five of 30 lessons are devoted to anatomy, which will be a subject covered in some fashion in most educational programs that students undertake to become personal care professionals. The first anatomy lesson in Unit One covers the major organ systems. Additional anatomy lessons are on the integumentary system (Unit Two), the musculoskeletal system (Unit Three), the respiratory and cardiovascular systems (Unit Four), and the blood and lymph systems (Unit Five). Moreover, technical information that would be learned in the study of each profession is systematically covered as the course progresses through career tracks and particular job titles. Each unit also contains important information on health and safety issues, including legal issues, as they relate to various personal care professions. Ethics as they ought to be applied to the personal care professions are also covered in some depth.

As they progress through the course, students will learn about the educational requirements to pursue various job titles, along with how they will prepare themselves to become credentialed in a chosen profession. Most of the job titles discussed in this course will require some sort of professional licensure, and students are provided with detailed information on that subject. In some cases, job titles may require a credential from a recognized professional association. This information is also laid out in the course, and students are directed to where they can find additional information about education, training, and credentialing of personal care professionals. The course also provides important information about public and private options for education and how costs may differ.

The introductory material for each lesson is designed to pique student interest in the lesson content, and this preparatory material is highly engaging and covers a wide range of topics. In many instances, the teacher can actually use the material that is in the lesson's introduction as part of the course content, since many of these introductions do contain additional useful information about the lesson's topic. Finally, the course has distinctive environmental and holistic health strands, which are also reflected in the final project, and the teacher can choose to emphasize this portion of the course and even augment it with additional material.