Prior to taking the state exam, students are required to return to HHS to attend an intensive OSBC review to prepare, said instructor Elizabeth Cress. This year’s class returned to school for six days after graduating.
“I am particularly proud of the determination and dedication of these students to voluntarily return to school,” Cress said. “I think that alone speaks volumes about each student’s desire for their success and the value they place on the program and their learning.”
Hall said she has always wanted to be a cosmetologist.
“I thought it would just be cutting hair, but there is so much more depth to it,” said the 18-year old.
Students are licensed to practice all aspects of hair design, haircutting, hair coloring, manicuring, pedicures, artificial nails and facials.
Hall said she is glad she stuck with it.
“I think the program is one of the best things I have ever done in my life, it has changed my life completely,” Hall said. “All the paths you go down trying to figure out what you want to do ... our instructors helped us along that path and helped us figure out what we needed to do to succeed.”
Students, accompanied by Cress, attended the OSBC exam in Columbus June 17 and tested out together as a group.
Each student is evaluated and graded individually, “but it helps them to look across the room and see a fellow classmate testing out at the same time,” Cress said. “I am there to encourage, calm and reassure them, and I am 100 percent convinced that having the person that had been preparing you for this moment, which is the prize, present for you, coaching and cheering you on, means a whole lot to the student.”
The students’ success on their exams “is a direct result of your skills as an instructor,” Cathy Franklin, examiner/CE administrator, OSBC wrote in an e-mail to Cress. “It’s great to see an instructor be so supportive of her students.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2158 or lebbing@coxohio.com.
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