Project: Sea-Tac Smiles
Organization: Seattle King County Department of Public Health
Seattle, WA
by Susan Thompson and Nancy Hammond

A Window of Education and Opportunity
They are from 13 different countries and speak 16 different languages but they have one thing in common: they care a lot about oral health.  They’re high school students who not only receive a learning experience but also a job experience, in one setting.  They are students in the Dental Assisting program at Sea-Tac Occupational Skills Center (referred to as simply OSC) and they have been a vital part of the Sea-Tac Smiles project, which links a high school occupational skills center and a community dental clinic.  “There are not many high schools that feature a fully functioning dental clinic on campus,” says Sue Shields, Principal/Director of the school. 

Walking into the dental assisting classroom at OSC there is a sense of ordered chaos.  A group of students may be going over an over-sized model of teeth with Dental Assisting Instructor, Carol Scharnikow, others may be working independently on computers and other students clad in clinic scrubs are working with dental staff in the freshly painted clinic separated from the classroom by just a wall of windows. 

Sisters Somaia and Sahar are now both graduates from the Dental Assisting program at OSC.  Sea-Tac, Washington, where OSC is located, is a long way from Iran where both sisters were born after their parents were forced to flee their native Afghanistan.  The family was finally able to immigrate to the US six years later after living in Iran, Pakistan and India. 

Sahar was six years old when her family moved to the US.  She spoke Hindi, Farsi and Dari, but she found herself in a first grade classroom without enough English words to tell the teacher about a boy who had just stolen her Barbie doll!  That, she says, made her so mad she was even more determined to learn English well.  Today, Sahar is a lovely, well spoken young woman who is so enthusiastic about dental assisting that while many teenagers spent the summer at the beach or on other leisure activities, 18-year-old Sahar interned at a community dental clinic to gain experience and to help people.  She especially enjoys the kids, many of whom like herself, are immigrants to the US. 

In September Sahar started college with the goal of becoming an orthodontist, a daunting 10 year journey, but she is excited to be starting.  Sahar’s sister, Somaia, was recently accepted into the pre-dental program at the University of Washington.  Sahar laughs as she says her parents are so proud of them that they are trying to get her younger brother to enroll in the dental assisting program at OSC.

Like Sahar and Somaia, Norma says the decision to take the dental assisting program as part of her high school education provided her with job skills today and inspiration to further her career in dentistry.  She wants to be the first in her family to attend college and plans on becoming a dental hygienist.  Her parents emigrated from Mexico and always urged her to work hard and “make something” of herself.  Earlier in her studies at the vocational high school, Norma struggled to find her calling.  But once she got into the dental assisting program at OSC, she knew she had found not only a job, but also a career. “The best part is the hands-on training,” said Norma.  “I was nervous at first, but working with real patients helped to increase my confidence and now I feel well-prepared for a career in the dental field.”   She is happy that she is following her mother’s advice to work hard and be successful.

Khanh’s parents came to the U.S. from Vietnam when she was just five years old.  When Khanh first started at OSC two years ago, she was enrolled in computer technology classes and spent a summer interning at Microsoft.  Satisfied with her first year at OSC, Khanh decided to try the dental assisting program during her senior year of high school and credits her hands-on training at the SeaTac Smiles dental clinic for her decision to switch career paths from computers to oral health. “At first I thought dentistry would be too difficult and too expensive to pursue as a career,” said Khanh.  “Once I starting working at the clinic, I realized how much I liked helping people.  I think dentistry is a career I will enjoy for the rest of my life.  That’s why I decided to work toward this goal, no matter how hard it is.”  Khanh will also be the first in her family to attend college.  In the fall she started at the University of Washington and wants to become a dentist.

Sea-Tac Smiles is so much more than a dental clinic serving the community’s oral health needs.  Like the windows that separate the clinic from the classroom, the hands-on, experiential education Sea-Tac Smiles makes possible is a window of opportunity for the students who pass through.

Graduates 2006 | Project's Graduate Report | Project's Information Page