Lessons Learned…
The Hospital School
In
the midst of IV’s, hospital gowns, doctors, nurses, therapists, and colorful
artwork on the walls, there was a school right there in that enormous pediatric
unit. Student-patients came faithfully to the hospital classroom every chance they had because keeping
up with homework kept each one thinking forward to the glorious reunion with
friends and teachers and coaches in the hometown schools they each longed for. Having health and strength to attend school
and participate each day in every part of school was indeed the hopeful dream
of these student- patients. A hopeful
dream not recognized at all as such by those students who have never had to
study and learn in the hospital school.
It’s so easy to take for granted things that are easy and good and ours,
but things can change as the wind blows. Change, expected or unexpected, often
serves to bring perspective. These dear,
brave student-patients longed for school. One particular day, I was asked to do
bedside tutoring with a student-patient who wouldn’t come to the school;
everything hurt and everything was wrong.
She didn’t want to talk, so we just sat that day and for the next few,
as well. Homework was pointless, she asserted. Okay. Interested in singing? I ventured
the suggestion without making eye contact. Stupid. Too loud. Silent sitting
resumed. The next day, I offered, singing in sign language because it wouldn’t
make any noise. With a combination of incredulity and hilarity and contempt,
our first eye contact occurred. What? Come on, it will be fun, and I wrote this
song for you. L-O-V-E, love is special,
a song just for her. It worked. She loved it. We learned it and continued to
sing it silently on my every visit to her room. When she got tired of singing
it, she let me help her with homework.
Eventually, she agreed to come to the hospital school only to help me
teach her song to the other student-patients. She thought it would make them
happy and she was pretty certain I couldn’t teach it as well as she could. She
was absolutely right.
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